SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: San Francisco: We Have An Air Game

By Art Spander
49ers Insider, San Francisco Chronicle iPad App

One starts with the ball. If everything is in synch, the other inevitably ends with it. There’s the quarterback, now for the 49ers Colin Kaepernick, and his favorite receiver, also known as the security blanket. Michael Crabtree. It’s always been thus.

There was Y.A. Tittle and Billy Wilson, Joe Montana and Dwight Clark, before it became Montana and Jerry Rice. Before it became Steve Young and Jerry Rice. “The two of you work together so much,” Young has said, echoing others, “you can answer each other’s sentences.”

What Michael Crabtree has answered, if in actions but not words, is the Niners' need for a deep threat, the individual with the moves and speed to get to the ball and the hands to clutch it.

They were a beautiful combination last weekend against the Arizona Cardinals, Kaepernick completing 16 passes for 276 yards and two touchdowns, Crabtree, the diva humbled, grabbing 8 of those for 172 yards – to total 1,105 for the season, ninth best in the NFL – and both the touchdowns.

“I was really impressed watching the game in person,” Niners coach Jim Harbaugh, a one-time pro quarterback himself, said on radio station KNBR, “and then I watched the TV copy when I got home, but the coaches' film copy was even better. The two of them really deserve to be highlighted."

“The throws that Colin made, the catches that Michael made, those were incredible grabs and he did a tremendous job getting open in several different ways – beating his man at the line in press coverage, creating separation downfield, the incredible one-handed catch, run after the catch. And then Colin was putting the ball, in four of those cases, in the only place it could have been. So they deserved to be highlighted. Those were huge plays and both of them did a great job.”

A job Crabtree, the No. 10 pick in the 2009 draft was expected to be doing. A job, Kaepernick, the No. 36 pick in the 2011 draft – and still irritated he wasn’t chosen until the second round – has shown he could do.

Crabtree could lord it over people a little too much, even if he had some justification. After only one season at Texas Tech, he was being called a Heisman candidate. And that spectacular play against Texas on Nov. 1, 2008, when Crabtree made the catch just inside the sideline, spun around Curtis Brown and scored the winning TD with one second left was not only voted the Big 12 Play of the Season but remains a YouTube favorite.

Supposedly, he would be picked by the Raiders at No. 7 the next spring, but the late Al Davis never followed protocol or the thoughts of others. Oakland drafted Darius Heyward-Bey, and so the Niners eagerly chose Crabtree. Who lorded it over them, with a long holdout before signing.

The first two years, Crabtree wasn’t so much a bust as non-entity. He improved in 2011, taking directions from Harbaugh, the rookie coach, and passes from Alex Smith, the revitalized QB. Still, the Niners were limited in throwing to wide receivers, Crabtree catching a lone pass for three yards.

Crabtree’s work through the offseason was evident even in the early games with Smith at quarterback. Then when Kaepernick, a bit quicker, a bit stronger than Smith, took over, the connection seemed perfect.

“My dude (Kaepernick) made it happen,” Crabtree said of becoming the sixth person in Niners history with at least 85 catches a season. The others: Rice, Clark, Roger Craig, Terrell Owens and Derek Loville.

“I’m just going out there running routes, catching the ball until I make a play.”

That’s what Niners management appreciates about Crabtree. And Kaepernick. The ability to make plays. The ability halfway through the second quarter to jolt the team into action and, after trailing 6-0, into the lead with a 49-yard touchdown pass.

“It was something we practiced at home, using my technique,” said Crabtree, who at first showed a surprise reluctance to discuss his recent success – and then almost couldn’t be stopped.

“Kaepernick threw me the ball. He’s real good with his feet and made something happen and really, really made the play.”

True or false, and there’s a degree of either, because pass plays like the tango take two (discounting blockers that is), and Crabtree can spin great tales about his own great moves. And plans.

“I think I can be a Pro Bowler,” said Crabtree. “I think I can. Now I’m trying to get to the Super Bowl.”

The next step is the NFC Divisional Playoff Jan. 12 at Candlestick, against the Green Bay Packers.

“You have to treat the playoffs like every other game,” said Kaepernick.

What you don’t do is treat Michael Crabtree like every other receiver. Because he’s not like every other. He’s Kaepernick’s main man.