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History won’t remember this San Francisco 49ers team the same way as the 1970s Minnesota Vikings or the 1990s Buffalo Bills, mostly because the franchise has had championship success before, albeit 20 or more years ago.
But it looks like these 49ers will end up the same way. Great teams. Deep playoff runs. Heartbreak before winning the Super Bowl. And then it ends.
The 49ers are done this year. Last week the Oakland Raiders lost 52-0 to a St. Louis Rams team with a losing record. On Sunday, the same Raiders beat the 49ers 24-13 to improve to 2-11. The 49ers aren’t mathematically eliminated from the playoff race, but if we're being honest, it's over. At 7-6, the hole is too deep in the NFC now. Especially for a team that looked like it had checked out on Sunday.
And, of course, that leads to the Jim Harbaugh issue. Harbaugh went 36-11-1 his first three 49ers seasons, turning around a staggering franchise. The 49ers lost in overtime of the NFC championship game his first year, was a goal-to-go touchdown from winning the Super Bowl his second season, and a last-second interception sunk them in the NFC championship game last year. Close, but no ring. And it’s no secret that the Harbaugh-49ers relationship is rocky. There are daily rumors about where Harbaugh might be traded to, or if he’ll go to Michigan. Whatever the outcome, his return to the 49ers seems like a long shot.
“My priorities are, No. 1, winning football games,” Harbaugh said after the game, in a clip played on NBC's pregame show for "Sunday Night Football." “No. 2 is the welfare of our players, coaches and staff. And last is what my personal, professional future is.”
Harbaugh has been such a big part of the 49ers’ recent success that it will be hard for them to find a coach who can replicate it. Maybe the secret will be finding someone who can coax some improvement out of quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick is in his third season as a starter, but looks no different than his first few NFL starts. He was 18 of 33 for 174 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions against a Raiders defense that has been below average. He didn’t look any more polished (and maybe even less so) than Oakland’s Derek Carr, who’s still a rookie. Whatever happens with the 49ers’ coaching staff, the top priority for 2015 will be Kaepernick’s improvement.*
Maybe this will all work out for the 49ers, and their nice rookie class helps maintain the success after a one-year hiatus from the playoffs. Maybe their next coach (assuming there is a new coach next year ... with Harbaugh it's tough to rule out anything) pulls a Jon Gruden following Tony Dungy in Tampa Bay.
But on Sunday, in that loss to the sad-sack Raiders, it sure seemed like we were watching the end of something that was pretty good, even if it wasn’t Super Bowl championship good.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 14 in the NFL season:
WINNERS
Seahawks defense: It took a while, but the Seahawks defense we’re used to watching is back.
The Seahawks have looked good the past few weeks, and were scary good on Sunday. Philadelphia quarterback Mark Sanchez had 96 passing yards. The Eagles averaged 2.6 yards per carry. Chip Kelly’s offense got nine first downs. The Eagles were completely shut down by the Seahawks. The final score was 24-14 but it wasn’t that close. Seattle outgained Philadelphia 440-139. It was a demolition.
The Seahawks were banged up earlier in the season. Cornerback Byron Maxwell and linebacker Bobby Wagner missed time. Safety Kam Chancellor didn’t look like himself earlier in the season. They’re all back and the Seahawks look like the defense that won the championship last year. Beware, NFC.
Le’Veon Bell: In NFL history, only Walter Payton had three straight games with 200-plus yards from scrimmage. He did that in 1977. Bell joined the club on Sunday.
Bell had 185 rushing yards, 50 receiving yards and three touchdowns in the Steelers’ 42-21 win over Cincinnati. It was his third straight 200-yard game, joining Payton in that club. The Steelers are the weirdest team in the NFL this season, and that’s saying something. They are entirely unpredictable from week to week. But they have a heck of a running back in Bell.
Bell transformed himself this offseason, dropping a lot of weight. He still has the power he had at Michigan State and he has added a top gear in speed. In an era in which running backs are losing value, Bell is a big-time player for a Steelers team that kept its AFC North hopes alive on Sunday.
Odell Beckham: The offensive rookie of the year vote is going to be very interesting, mostly because of all the great receivers in this class. You can make an argument for a few candidates, but Beckham is probably emerging with the strongest case.
Beckham had 11 catches for 130 yards and a touchdown. He had 117 of those yards in the first half as the Giants built a huge lead.
Beckham missed the first four games of the season, but now has 829 yards with three games to go. He has posted at least 90 yards in six straight games. He’s already a legit NFL star.
Donald Penn: Penn is the fat-guy-touchdown king. According to ESPN, Penn became the heaviest player to score at least three career touchdowns, after his scoring catch against the 49ers. Penn, at 340 pounds, outweighs the old king of that list with three touchdowns, William “Refrigerator” Perry at 335 pounds.
Penn lined up as an eligible lineman, engaged in a block and came off to catch a short touchdown from Derek Carr. He then jumped into the stands (look out!) and got a decent beer shower from the crowd.
#JJforMVP: Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt is the best player in football, and if he doesn’t win the MVP this year, let’s just rename the award to reflect that defensive players are ineligible to win it. Watt had three more sacks in Houston’s win on Sunday. And it will be a shame when the voters just give the MVP award to the best quarterback, as usual.
LOSERS
Coaches who love punting: With a little more than 5:30 left against Denver, the Bills were down 14 points and had a fourth and 2. It was at their own 16-yard line, but that doesn’t matter. You have to go for it. Except, Bills coach Doug Marrone didn’t. Inexplicably, he punted. The Bills later scored late in the game, couldn’t recover an onside kick and lost by seven points. That extra possession Marrone gave away might have been nice. You might already have figured this out, but the odds of picking up a fourth and 2 are a little bit better than recovering an onside kick.
On the other side of the country, the Eagles were down 10 points to the Seahawks. They faced a fourth and 11 with a little more than four minutes, but the down and distance didn’t matter. There wasn’t enough time to punt and win. But the Eagles punted. It was very unlike Chip Kelly. The Eagles never got the ball back.*
In the Sunday night game, Chargers coach Mike McCoy made the same awful mistake. The Chargers trailed by nine points with a little more than six minutes left. They had a fourth and 4 at the 50-yard line. McCoy turned off his brain and punted, a miserable decision. When the Chargers got the ball back, they had lost four minutes off the clock and 30 yards of field position. Punting that spot was amazingly bad.
Coaches punt too much. Most forward thinking people get that. But because coaches for 50 years have always punted in most situations, or maybe because coaches selfishly want to avoid a blowout loss that goes on their resume, they punt when it realistically kills their team's chances to win. Someday we’ll move beyond the love affair with punting in situations in which a punt is ridiculous. But Sunday wasn’t that day.
Jay Gruden: Some of Gruden’s quotes lately seem to hint that he’s under the impression he could be fired after one season coaching the Washington Redskins. There have been reports that Gruden being one-and-done is possible, and first-year head coaches don’t generally talk like this:
Gruden, who is apparently fooling himself into thinking he can build a winner with Colt McCoy, saw his offense shut out in a 24-0 loss to St. Louis. McCoy was 20-of-32 for 199 yards. Robert Griffin III has been benched. Kirk Cousins has been benched. If McCoy falters down the stretch too, well, maybe it’s time to start looking at the common thread rather than blame each quarterback for the failures.
Firing a coach after one season would be a panic move for a franchise that needs something good to happen. But if anyone already thought Gruden was on the hot seat, Sunday’s loss reaffirmed that stance.
Ken Whisenhunt: Speaking of coaches who are going to be evaluated pretty closely after their first season with a team, there should be some questions about Whisenhunt too.
The Tennessee Titans have issues, and like the Washington situation, cutting bait on a coach after one season is typically a foolish idea. But the Titans are getting worse. Against a really bad Giants team that hadn’t won since Oct. 5, the Titans trailed 30-0 early in the second half. That’s awful.
Since a Week 1 win at Kansas City, there have been no signs of improvement from the Titans. Even their other win, a two-point home victory over the woeful Jacksonville Jaguars, was ugly and uninspiring.
The Titans shouldn’t fire a coach after one season, even though Whisenhunt is now 20-41 as a head coach since his quarterback in Arizona, Kurt Warner, retired. But it is fair to ask, what in Whisenhunt’s Titans tenure to this point would lead anyone to believe he’s the right guy for the job?
Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins: These are two good teams that put themselves in a pretty big hole in a crowded AFC playoff race (can’t we just vacate the NFC South’s spot and give it to one of these two teams?).
The Dolphins and Chiefs both had leads in huge games on Sunday, and then the offense left them. Miami led 10-0 against Baltimore and fell apart after that in a 28-13 loss. Now the Dolphins are 7-6 and lose a head-to-head tiebreaker to the Ravens, who are 8-5 after a very impressive win. Things really got bad on the sideline with defensive tackle Jared Odrick and coach Joe Philbin yelling at each other.
The Chiefs led 14-6 at halftime at Arizona, against a Cardinals team that has struggled to move the ball with Drew Stanton at quarterback. But the Chiefs never scored in the second half, and Stanton made one big play – a 26-yard touchdown pass to Jaron Brown on third and long. That was all the Cardinals needed to win 17-14. The Chiefs are now 7-6 too.
Over the next week or two we’ll see some teams drop out of the AFC race, which had eight wild-card contenders between six and eight wins coming into this week. The Chiefs and Dolphins were the teams that had the most regret on Sunday.
But it looks like these 49ers will end up the same way. Great teams. Deep playoff runs. Heartbreak before winning the Super Bowl. And then it ends.
The 49ers are done this year. Last week the Oakland Raiders lost 52-0 to a St. Louis Rams team with a losing record. On Sunday, the same Raiders beat the 49ers 24-13 to improve to 2-11. The 49ers aren’t mathematically eliminated from the playoff race, but if we're being honest, it's over. At 7-6, the hole is too deep in the NFC now. Especially for a team that looked like it had checked out on Sunday.
And, of course, that leads to the Jim Harbaugh issue. Harbaugh went 36-11-1 his first three 49ers seasons, turning around a staggering franchise. The 49ers lost in overtime of the NFC championship game his first year, was a goal-to-go touchdown from winning the Super Bowl his second season, and a last-second interception sunk them in the NFC championship game last year. Close, but no ring. And it’s no secret that the Harbaugh-49ers relationship is rocky. There are daily rumors about where Harbaugh might be traded to, or if he’ll go to Michigan. Whatever the outcome, his return to the 49ers seems like a long shot.
“My priorities are, No. 1, winning football games,” Harbaugh said after the game, in a clip played on NBC's pregame show for "Sunday Night Football." “No. 2 is the welfare of our players, coaches and staff. And last is what my personal, professional future is.”
Harbaugh has been such a big part of the 49ers’ recent success that it will be hard for them to find a coach who can replicate it. Maybe the secret will be finding someone who can coax some improvement out of quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick is in his third season as a starter, but looks no different than his first few NFL starts. He was 18 of 33 for 174 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions against a Raiders defense that has been below average. He didn’t look any more polished (and maybe even less so) than Oakland’s Derek Carr, who’s still a rookie. Whatever happens with the 49ers’ coaching staff, the top priority for 2015 will be Kaepernick’s improvement.*
Maybe this will all work out for the 49ers, and their nice rookie class helps maintain the success after a one-year hiatus from the playoffs. Maybe their next coach (assuming there is a new coach next year ... with Harbaugh it's tough to rule out anything) pulls a Jon Gruden following Tony Dungy in Tampa Bay.
But on Sunday, in that loss to the sad-sack Raiders, it sure seemed like we were watching the end of something that was pretty good, even if it wasn’t Super Bowl championship good.
Here are the rest of the winners and losers from Week 14 in the NFL season:
WINNERS
Seahawks defense: It took a while, but the Seahawks defense we’re used to watching is back.
The Seahawks have looked good the past few weeks, and were scary good on Sunday. Philadelphia quarterback Mark Sanchez had 96 passing yards. The Eagles averaged 2.6 yards per carry. Chip Kelly’s offense got nine first downs. The Eagles were completely shut down by the Seahawks. The final score was 24-14 but it wasn’t that close. Seattle outgained Philadelphia 440-139. It was a demolition.
The Seahawks were banged up earlier in the season. Cornerback Byron Maxwell and linebacker Bobby Wagner missed time. Safety Kam Chancellor didn’t look like himself earlier in the season. They’re all back and the Seahawks look like the defense that won the championship last year. Beware, NFC.
Le’Veon Bell: In NFL history, only Walter Payton had three straight games with 200-plus yards from scrimmage. He did that in 1977. Bell joined the club on Sunday.
Bell had 185 rushing yards, 50 receiving yards and three touchdowns in the Steelers’ 42-21 win over Cincinnati. It was his third straight 200-yard game, joining Payton in that club. The Steelers are the weirdest team in the NFL this season, and that’s saying something. They are entirely unpredictable from week to week. But they have a heck of a running back in Bell.
Bell transformed himself this offseason, dropping a lot of weight. He still has the power he had at Michigan State and he has added a top gear in speed. In an era in which running backs are losing value, Bell is a big-time player for a Steelers team that kept its AFC North hopes alive on Sunday.
Odell Beckham: The offensive rookie of the year vote is going to be very interesting, mostly because of all the great receivers in this class. You can make an argument for a few candidates, but Beckham is probably emerging with the strongest case.
Beckham had 11 catches for 130 yards and a touchdown. He had 117 of those yards in the first half as the Giants built a huge lead.
Beckham missed the first four games of the season, but now has 829 yards with three games to go. He has posted at least 90 yards in six straight games. He’s already a legit NFL star.
Donald Penn: Penn is the fat-guy-touchdown king. According to ESPN, Penn became the heaviest player to score at least three career touchdowns, after his scoring catch against the 49ers. Penn, at 340 pounds, outweighs the old king of that list with three touchdowns, William “Refrigerator” Perry at 335 pounds.
Penn lined up as an eligible lineman, engaged in a block and came off to catch a short touchdown from Derek Carr. He then jumped into the stands (look out!) and got a decent beer shower from the crowd.
#JJforMVP: Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt is the best player in football, and if he doesn’t win the MVP this year, let’s just rename the award to reflect that defensive players are ineligible to win it. Watt had three more sacks in Houston’s win on Sunday. And it will be a shame when the voters just give the MVP award to the best quarterback, as usual.
LOSERS
Coaches who love punting: With a little more than 5:30 left against Denver, the Bills were down 14 points and had a fourth and 2. It was at their own 16-yard line, but that doesn’t matter. You have to go for it. Except, Bills coach Doug Marrone didn’t. Inexplicably, he punted. The Bills later scored late in the game, couldn’t recover an onside kick and lost by seven points. That extra possession Marrone gave away might have been nice. You might already have figured this out, but the odds of picking up a fourth and 2 are a little bit better than recovering an onside kick.
On the other side of the country, the Eagles were down 10 points to the Seahawks. They faced a fourth and 11 with a little more than four minutes, but the down and distance didn’t matter. There wasn’t enough time to punt and win. But the Eagles punted. It was very unlike Chip Kelly. The Eagles never got the ball back.*
In the Sunday night game, Chargers coach Mike McCoy made the same awful mistake. The Chargers trailed by nine points with a little more than six minutes left. They had a fourth and 4 at the 50-yard line. McCoy turned off his brain and punted, a miserable decision. When the Chargers got the ball back, they had lost four minutes off the clock and 30 yards of field position. Punting that spot was amazingly bad.
Coaches punt too much. Most forward thinking people get that. But because coaches for 50 years have always punted in most situations, or maybe because coaches selfishly want to avoid a blowout loss that goes on their resume, they punt when it realistically kills their team's chances to win. Someday we’ll move beyond the love affair with punting in situations in which a punt is ridiculous. But Sunday wasn’t that day.
Jay Gruden: Some of Gruden’s quotes lately seem to hint that he’s under the impression he could be fired after one season coaching the Washington Redskins. There have been reports that Gruden being one-and-done is possible, and first-year head coaches don’t generally talk like this:
“As a coach, you are judged on wins and losses,” Gruden said, according to ESPN.com, “and you know that going in. All you can do is … try to figure out a way to get victories in the NFL. If you don’t, obviously, you are always subject to the owners making a change. That’s their right. I’m just going to keep coaching the way I know how and not worry about it and do the best I can.”*
Even in an organization that is as dysfunctional as Washington, firing Gruden after one season doesn’t make a lot of sense. But if owner Daniel Snyder had the thought in his head, Sunday won’t help Gruden.
Gruden, who is apparently fooling himself into thinking he can build a winner with Colt McCoy, saw his offense shut out in a 24-0 loss to St. Louis. McCoy was 20-of-32 for 199 yards. Robert Griffin III has been benched. Kirk Cousins has been benched. If McCoy falters down the stretch too, well, maybe it’s time to start looking at the common thread rather than blame each quarterback for the failures.
Firing a coach after one season would be a panic move for a franchise that needs something good to happen. But if anyone already thought Gruden was on the hot seat, Sunday’s loss reaffirmed that stance.
Ken Whisenhunt: Speaking of coaches who are going to be evaluated pretty closely after their first season with a team, there should be some questions about Whisenhunt too.
The Tennessee Titans have issues, and like the Washington situation, cutting bait on a coach after one season is typically a foolish idea. But the Titans are getting worse. Against a really bad Giants team that hadn’t won since Oct. 5, the Titans trailed 30-0 early in the second half. That’s awful.
Since a Week 1 win at Kansas City, there have been no signs of improvement from the Titans. Even their other win, a two-point home victory over the woeful Jacksonville Jaguars, was ugly and uninspiring.
The Titans shouldn’t fire a coach after one season, even though Whisenhunt is now 20-41 as a head coach since his quarterback in Arizona, Kurt Warner, retired. But it is fair to ask, what in Whisenhunt’s Titans tenure to this point would lead anyone to believe he’s the right guy for the job?
Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins: These are two good teams that put themselves in a pretty big hole in a crowded AFC playoff race (can’t we just vacate the NFC South’s spot and give it to one of these two teams?).
The Dolphins and Chiefs both had leads in huge games on Sunday, and then the offense left them. Miami led 10-0 against Baltimore and fell apart after that in a 28-13 loss. Now the Dolphins are 7-6 and lose a head-to-head tiebreaker to the Ravens, who are 8-5 after a very impressive win. Things really got bad on the sideline with defensive tackle Jared Odrick and coach Joe Philbin yelling at each other.
The Chiefs led 14-6 at halftime at Arizona, against a Cardinals team that has struggled to move the ball with Drew Stanton at quarterback. But the Chiefs never scored in the second half, and Stanton made one big play – a 26-yard touchdown pass to Jaron Brown on third and long. That was all the Cardinals needed to win 17-14. The Chiefs are now 7-6 too.
Over the next week or two we’ll see some teams drop out of the AFC race, which had eight wild-card contenders between six and eight wins coming into this week. The Chiefs and Dolphins were the teams that had the most regret on Sunday.
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab