It's desperate times for 49ers as RB Frank Gore guarantees playoffs
Playoff guarantees usually come from the flamboyant types: the quarterbacks and receivers, or Rex Ryan.
This one has a little extra gravitas because it comes from a quieter star.
"We're going to the playoffs," Frank Gore told CSN Bay Area. "We're going to do it."
If the San Francisco 49ers' starting running back is right, the Niners better win Sunday. San Francisco is 4-4 and three games behind NFC West leader Arizona. A loss to the New Orleans Saints could land Jim Harbaugh's team four games back with two games remaining against the Seattle Seahawks and another battle with the Arizona Cardinals in Week 17. Do the math: It's doom's doorstep.
San Francisco needed a statement like this, and now. A lot of the talk out of Niners camp has been whispers and grumbling about whether Harbaugh has lost the team. Even Niners legend Jerry Rice has predicted the head coach won't be around past February.
Steve Young said the team seems "broken," and general manager Trent Baalke agreed somewhat. "Some things are broken," he told a local radio station.
It's hard to argue that. The Niners' superstars don't seem super at all this season. Colin Kaepernick has hardly lived up to his big contract extension from earlier this season, trailing Brian Hoyer in passing yards entering Thursday. Michael Crabtree is on pace for only 700 yards receiving for the season, and Anquan Boldin has found the end zone only twice. It adds up to a 19th-ranked offense. Meh.
The defense was good enough to rank second in the league, but there are still key injuries that allowed woeful Chicago to steal a win in the Levi Stadium grand opener. Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos ransacked the Niners for 42 points and that was before last weekend's post-bye loss to the St. Louis Rams. There's certainly something missing here, and it's not just Aldon Smith and NaVorro Bowman.
Fingers point to Harbaugh. The irascible man in khakis reportedly turned down an extension before the season, setting off a whirlwind of speculation about whether he wants to stick around. He'll have plenty of offers elsewhere – University of Michigan fans even got excited this week when it appeared a school plane was headed to the Bay Area – and there have been reports that some in the Niners organization don't want him around. That empty silence you hear is the chorus of people screaming support for the head coach. It all reeks of infighting rather than fighting, and that brings us back to Gore.
To oversimplify: The Niners win when Gore gets the ball a lot. That was made clear in the ugliest possible way when Kaepernick fumbled away the game last Sunday near the St. Louis goal line. Gore didn't touch the ball in the last minute, which is still stunning in retrospect. San Francisco went from running the ball more than half the time last year to only 44 percent this season. The results are obvious.
Things get a little more complicated when Gore's performance factors in: He has averaged 3 yards per carry over the past three games, and he's not getting much in the way of yards-after-contact. Throw in Kaepernick's erratic play and it gets too easy to defend the Niners: Stop the run and force No. 7 to find his targets. There appears to be no counterpunch available.
Which makes the second part of Gore's statement even more meaningful. He said, "Once everybody takes care of their jobs, we have a great shot."
He went on, downplaying the notion that the key is for him to get more carries:
"We have great players all around. Receivers, the backs. I just think as a group we have to do better, be more consistent."
There's a chance he's right, and more competence will solve this. After all, the defense is good enough. More frightening for Niners fans is the possibility that the talent isn't there. It's harder to accept the possibility that Gore is old and beat up, Boldin is toward the end of a great career, Crabtree is, to quote a certain cornerback, "mediocre," and Kaepernick isn't a terrific passer. Blame Harbaugh all you want, but he didn't fumble when a division game was on the line. He's not the one who has been sacked 27 times in only eight games.
Gore's wake-up call needs to work, as the Saints seem to score at home at will. Three straight losses and a sub-.500 record in mid-November in a rugged NFC West will surely make the season seem beyond repair.
And that would make the offseason completely devoid of guarantees.
