AS THE RAVEN FLIES: Thought the rule changes killed the kickoff return? Tell that to Jacoby Jones and his new piece of history. Photo courtesy Al Bello/Getty Images
Who has it better than us?
PLAYING LIGHTS OUT: A power outage created not one but two intermissions. What is this, hockey? Photo courtesy Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
The Ravens, apparently.
That team catchphrase, like so many other things, didn’t go according to plan Sunday night. A year after we had a rematch of possibly the greatest Super Bowl in history, New Orleans hosted perhaps the most bizarre.
Even Beyonce seemed to nail her performance making us wonder whether we’d entered another multiverse.
Let’s recap for a minute. The vast majority of the media spent the last two weeks propping up the 49ers. Look how loaded their roster is, people would say. Look at what a young leader Colin Kaepernick is. Nothing shakes him. I’m just saying, we have never seen him and Batman in the same room, for Christ’s sake.
And for all that, San Francisco looked about as comfortable playing football as the city’s baseball team (they, at least, ARE world champions) in the first half. What the hell happened? One pundit even said before the game “I can imagine virtually every scenario except a Ravens blowout.” I wonder how his foot tasted around halftime.
This sort of thing happened in the conference championships, too. Remember how John Harbaugh had no shot against the mastermind Bill Belichick? Remember how the Falcons had finally snapped their playoff curse? You’d think the media would get their story lines right out of just sheer dumb luck just once.
The coverage was so lopsided during Super Bowl week, it almost seems laughable looking back now. The Baltimore Ravens, now the world champions, were one of two teams playing for it all, and all anyone wanted to talk about were thirteen-year-old murders, deer antler spray, and one sound bite Joe Flacco said last offseason about being the best quarterback.
CARY ON: Things got chippy Sunday night, especially between each teams’ receivers and the other teams’ secondary. Photo courtesy Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Maybe it all got to the Ravens a little bit, because they looked like they were playing with a chip on their shoulder there in the first half.
It was unbelievable how uneven the two teams came out playing. This wasn’t like the NFC Championship where we blinked at it was 14-0 off of essentially two bad (or good?) plays. For thirty minutes, one team would not let up and another refused to get started.
So when the second half kicked off and Jacoby Jones ran 109 yards to pay dirt, suffice it to say, it felt as though the Super Bowl was over. The only things that’d be keeping us watching were a few proposition bets and maybe a game of super bowl squares.
But then, as if on cue, the game got a second “halftime”. Half the lights went out in the Superdome, turning the greatest sport spectacle on earth into some sort of dimly-lit impromptu school recess. While officials scrambled to find out what the hell happened, players lazed about as if it were a Knights of Columbus picnic.
The unscheduled stoppage gave viewers both in NOLA and at home free time to, a, speculate what was going on, and, b, whip up some topical one-liners. “God has come for Ray Lewis” several people tweeted. “Too bad there’s not a deer antler spray that could help us recover from this blackout faster,” I added.
Even CBS broadcasters Jim Nantz and Phil Simms got cut off the air, leaving camera men to pan aimlessly as if they were shooting an abstract music video.
But somewhere in all that darkness, a new 49ers team emerged. I don’t know if Melky Cabrera ran around handing out samples of HGH in the darkness, but something lit a fire under that squad. For the rest of the game, San Francisco actually looked like that team all the media outlets had been talking about for 14 days.
Too bad they were already down 22 points.
LET’S BE FRANK: Gore contributed to a historic near-comeback, but his post-game analysis couldn’t have been farther from the truth. Photo courtesy Harry How/Getty Images
Baltimore tried to help them out, too. After scoring four touchdowns in two halves and some change, the Ravens went on to only score six more point the rest of the game. Ray Rice even felt so bad, he spotted the Niners a possession.
San Francisco took full advantage and, an hour or so after we had a half-hour delay, we had ourselves a ball game. Down five points and his team five yards away from a touchdown, Colin Kaepernick threw a ball to Michael Crabtree where he drew contact but not a touchdown.
It was a close call either way, but the refs didn’t throw a flag. And that was that. Or, at least, it should have been.
After the game, Jim Harbaugh droned on about the play like a bitter ex-girlfriend that had just got dumped. He started off by saying, “I really want to handle this with class” and then did nothing of the sort. At that press conference, I couldn’t help but to notice Harbaugh was pointing fingers like a begrudged employee that had just gotten fired. I’d hate to see him if things ever got REALLY sour in San Fran.
Okay, maybe he wasn’t pointing the fingers at EVERYONE, but he didn’t let the refs go. Even Michael Crabtree lamented simply “it is what it is”. When you’ve been outclassed by Michael Crabtree, it’s time to rethink how you’re conducting yourself.
But that wasn’t the most preposterous thing said after the game. No, that award goes to Frank Gore who said the 49ers showed they were the better team.
Um, what?
“They got away with one today,” said Gore, “We showed we were the better team. It was just a couple plays here, a couple plays there.”
A couple plays where? You mean the ENTIRE first half, Frank? We’re those the plays the Ravens got away with?
MEN POSSESSED: Love him or hate him (or his antics), Ray Lewis got the storybook ending he was gunning for. Photo courtesy Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Sorry, but that’s not what happened. San Francisco came out slow for a second consecutive championship game and this time they couldn’t come back. Their maximum rally effort apparently lies somewhere between the 17-point deficit against Atlanta and the 22-point deficit against Baltimore. If the Ravens “got away with one”, it’s because the Niners collectively GAVE them one.
And maybe it was just me, but it was pretty off-putting how much pouting the red and gold did in the wake of Super Bowl XLVII. They finished the year first-losers and there’s going to be plenty of time to analyze and examine what went wrong. First-losers, San Francisco, not sore losers.
And what was the cause of death? If you ask me, I think they got a little too high on their own horse. I think they started buying into all the things that were being said about them. Colin Kaepernick, with only nine games under his belt, wanted to cash in on his bicep kisses (and, for the record, ‘Kaepernicking’ is not nearly as fun as ‘Tebowing’ or ‘Girffining’ or even ‘Te’oing’). The city was already dreaming up six months of back-to-back championships and looking forward to spring with how hot the San Jose Sharks and Golden State Warriors have been.
Yes, if you ask me, somewhere in all that, they forgot the cliche that they have to take it one game at a time. You’re not world champions until that confetti has fallen.
At times on Sunday night, both teams forgot about that. Unfortunately for the Niners, though, only one team could lose the game.
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NOTE: This story was originally published on SportsHead. To read this article or others click here.
When Bryan isn’t writing, he is on Twitter! Make sure to give him a follow @bclienesch for NFL updates and other shenanigans!
