San Francisco 49ers

The most maligned division in the NFL once again produced a mixed bag from its teams this season and for the eighth straight year an NFC West squad collected a postseason victory. The division produced one of the best sides in the NFL, one of the worst, and two teams who had up-and-down season that offered hope to the optimistic that they might make strides next season and equal evidence to doubters that they could fall back in 2012.

But 2012 is for the future and right now we are honoring the best players from the NFC West for the 2011 regular season as we make the final stop on our All-Division tour. The team unsurprisingly features a high number of San Francisco 49ers, but each team had players to be proud of this season and one St. Louis Ram has a rare honor that was afforded to no other player in this series. What was that honor? Read on and find out as we unveil our last All-Division Team for 2011.

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This championship weekend was rightly billed in many quarters as offense versus defense; who would win the age-old battle? In both games, the side with the better offense advanced to the Super Bowl, but in neither case was it on the back of that offensive unit. The Jim Harbaugh-led 49ers suffered a similar fate to his brother’s Ravens earlier in the day,  a special teams gaffe handing victory to a big-market opponent.

In wet and windswept conditions, each offense took advantage of meager opportunities to send the game to overtime, but neither side looked capable of making the telling play before fatigue set in on either defense. After largely holding their own in the first half, the Giants’ offensive line capitulated in the second, leaving Eli Manning a sitting duck. On the other side, just a week removed from his heroics, Alex Smith appeared to revert to type, completely unable to find his wide receivers and move the San Francisco offense out of first gear. San Francisco has had a stunning first season under Jim Harbaugh and have great momentum to build on to potentially dominate the NFC West, but that positivity may be lost for the next month as they try to put this galling loss behind them.
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As we got deeper into the second half of this game, you just knew it was going to take a mistake from one of the offenses (or indeed, the special teams) to break the deadlock. So great was the defense’s stranglehold, it seemed we may be in for an even longer game than the one we got.

I’ll leave the Giants’ defense for my colleagues to pick up tomorrow, but the topic here is Justin Smith and just how New York went about trying to combat him. The truth is, they invested a lot to hold him in check which worked to begin with, but then, when they were left with no option but to leave him one-on-one, it was usually to their cost.

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The New York Giants at the San Francisco 49ers. Now that is an old school matchup in a season of new wave offenses. In a season where offenses have had their way with the league, the 49ers have got themselves to an NFC Championship game with the league’s best defense, and the Giants only really started to look like themselves when their defensive front four began to fire on all cylinders. To get to this game each side had to knock off one of the league’s best offenses and the Giants had to take down the defending Super Bowl Champions in their own back yard. Now the two sides meet in a rematch of their Week 10 encounter with the winner headed to Indianapolis for the Super Bowl.

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A finer playoff game you could never hope to see. This game had it all, big plays, stifling defense, periods of yo-yo scoring and a final two minutes that will live long in the memories of partisan and neutral fans alike. In the game the San Francisco 49ers couldn’t win they did just that–and in absolutely spectacular fashion. The 49ers had a narrow margin for error in this game and in a game they dominated with five takeaways and led by as many as 17 points, they only just edged out the victory with a touchdown in the final 10 seconds. The 49ers needed every advantage they gave themselves in this game and just scraped out victorious with some new heroes crowned in the great folklore of 49er playoff history.

For the defeated New Orleans Saints, the franchise is still without a road playoff victory and even though the offense came alive late, it was mistakes by the offense early that proved costly. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow. What a game and if you, like me, are pretty stoked after such a thrilling matchup, perhaps you’ll excuse some rather excited rhetoric in this report.

After staying on the defensive side of the game last week, I decided to look to the other side of the ball and after three and a half minutes of the first quarter was regretting my decision. On a sideline go route, Jimmy Graham, my “Focus Point” for the day, banged his head and left the field injured to various calls from the commentators about concussions and how he may not return. Was this the flaw in my plan?

As it turned out, Graham returned on the next drive and played a fairly pivotal role in what, at the moment at least, appears to be one of the best playoff games ever. Read the rest of this entry »

The first encounter of divisional weekend is the only game of the four that isn’t a rematch from the 2011 regular season, but it does provide the matchup between arguably the best defense in the league and the best offense. A true meeting of fire and ice.

Coming into the season, the prospect of the Saints travelling to an NFC West team on divisional playoff weekend would have seemed absurd, no one could have expected an NFC West team to secure a bye, but the 49ers have done just that and they will need their defense to be at its best to ensure the Saints leave the left coast with another defeat. The 49ers have faced some good offenses this season in the shape of the Eagles, Lions, and Giants but nothing comes close to the Saints’ explosive, deep, and varied attack. As good as the 49ers’ defense has been this season, this is a new test. Read the rest of this entry »

The 49ers have a lot going for them this weekend when they face the Saints, but this game is going to come down to how each team fares in the red zone, and that will ultimately prove to be their Achilles heel. San Francisco is playing at home, and New Orleans does not have a road playoff win in the franchise’s history (0-4). The 49ers have the best defensive player in football (Justin Smith), and arguably two of the next three on that list this season (ILB duo of Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman). They will also field the player that led the entire league in our Pass Rushing Productivity metric this season in the shape of Aldon Smith. If ever a defense was set up to combat the Saints, it’s the 49ers.

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Job done for the San Francisco 49ers.

The end result was slightly less comfortable than it both should and might have been for the position they got themselves into, but they got that crucial bye week and at least one home playoff game on their first visit in a decade. The 49ers pushed the envelope giving extensive play to some backups and the Rams pushed them all the way with a late comeback, but at the end of the day, the 49ers have earned two weeks off.

For the St Louis Rams, this was a fine effort in what was–if you believe the reports–the final game for head coach Steve Spagnuolo. While some fine performances almost gave them another upset win over a playoff team, the Rams’ shortcomings on offense and defense bit them again. Once the uncertainty over the future of their head coach and general manager are decided, attention will turn to free agency and the draft. How to turn around the fortunes of a team that hasn’t had a winning season 2003? Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, the NFC West was embarrassed by having a team steal a playoff spot and a home playoff game by registering a 7-9 record with a Week 17 win. In 2011, their divisional champion will secure a bye week with a victory over the same opponent that lost the final game of the 2010 regular season. The division champ has once again changed, as the San Francisco 49ers finally take the mantle they were expected to walk away with last season. The team on the receiving is once again the St Louis Rams who with a loss will walk away with their third season of two wins or less in the last four. The Rams could even be picking first for the second time in three years as an injury ravaged season (all of the cornerbacks they took to training camp are on injured reserve for example) has seen them plumb the depths of the NFL. Read the rest of this entry »