Defenses have figured out how to stop 49ers

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Jed York gave the straightforward answer. Jed York, who doesn’t draw up game plans or carry the ball, but in effect as 49ers team president carries the responsibility of having everything done properly, explained what would be done about Aldon Smith.
  
Neither head coach Jim Harbaugh nor quarterback Colin Kaepernick could be, or would be, as forthright, about another problem: the way the Niners have been playing football.
    
San Francisco lost another on Sunday, this time at Candlestick Park, where the crowd of 69,732 appeared more bewildered than irate. Maybe the 29-3 defeat at Seattle a week ago could be understood. But not getting beat, 27-7, by the Indianapolis Colts at home.
   
Two losses in a row for the first time in Harbaugh’s two-plus seasons as the Niners' coach. Offensive ineffectiveness for a second consecutive week. An indication that defensive coordinators around the NFL have figured out how to stop the read-option and thus stop Kaepernick, who was sacked three times, fumbled once and was intercepted once.
    
It’s been a rotten few days for the Niners, who last season went to the Super Bowl. First the whipping by Seattle. Then, early Friday morning, around 7 a.m., the arrest of Smith, the defensive end, on charges of DUI and possession of marijuana. Management decided he would play Sunday — a doubtful decision — and he did play.
   
The defense was satisfactory, to a point, although it never really could stop second-year quarterback Andrew Luck, who Harbaugh coached at Stanford. The offense, outgained 336 yards to 254, was unsatisfactory, out of synch, worrisome.
   
Smith is headed to a rehab center after his fourth arrest and maybe a fine and suspension by the NFL. He won’t be in uniform Thursday when in this loony-tunes schedule, the Niners, 1-2, will play at St. Louis. Some thought he shouldn’t have been in uniform Sunday.
  
There was an apology from Smith after the game, with the comment, “I also wanted to let it be known that this is a problem, and it’s something that I will get fixed, and that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that this never happens again.”
  
York said Niners executives, realizing there could be outrage from beyond, still “decided that sitting someone down and paying him didn’t seem like appropriate punishment.” As if playing him and paying him is?
   
The Niners, players and coaches, contended that they were not distracted by the Smith situation. That wasn’t the reason they lost, said the chorus. This leaves only one accounting. They were outplayed once more.
   
Kaepernick was brilliant most of the time last year as a mid-season starter. The flaws, maybe a failure to call an audible, perhaps a pass flung too hard, were acceptable. He could run. He could throw, and opponents — with the exceptions of Seattle and, in the Super Bowl, Baltimore — didn’t know how to react.
   
Now, after months of scheming, they do. The serve-and-volley game evens out. First, the offense has the advantage. Then, given time, the defensive coaches create their own edge. So the offensive coaches go to the grease board and devise something else.
   
Athletes are only part of the equation, if the major part. When the defense swarms here or drops three men there, the offense may be stymied. The Niner offense certainly has been.
 
“I think they ran a couple of read-options,” said Colts coach Chuck Pagano, “and our guys did an unbelievable job on (those) . . . We talk about plastering so guys don’t come out free on the back end once he starts to scramble. The pass rush was just relentless.”
  
Kaepernick, never very informative, retreated behind the obligatory “it wasn’t them, it was us,” or in his words, “The fact is we didn’t execute.” Why doesn’t anyone ever admit he/they didn’t execute because the other team wouldn’t let them?
  
“They put a spy on me,” Kaepernick said about a defender who follows the quarterback, “so they have one more to account for me. I have to be able to make throws downfield.”
  
Not an easy task when under ferocious pressure.
 
Harbaugh said he didn’t believe there was something technically wrong with Kaepernick.
   
“We didn’t make the plays,” said Harbaugh, sticking to the format.
    
Then a bit of honesty snuck in: “There wasn’t enough opportunity to make plays.”
    
Because of the Indianapolis defense. Because perhaps the Niners were without their best receiver, Vernon Davis, and already had lost another receiving star, Michael Crabtree, on an injury before the season began. Still, every team has injuries. The best overcome them.
 
“We got to be real,” said Harbaugh, “got to look how we can improve. We have no choice but to find our way.”
  
No choice except losing games.

SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: All for one: Harbaugh, Kaepernick joined at the lip

By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle 49ers Insider

His father, Jack Harbaugh, said it specifically a while back: “Loose lips sink ships.” Provide no information that will benefit the enemy. To Jim Harbaugh, that would be every other team in the NFL.
  
Also the media.
  
We’re never going to learn much from a Jim Harbaugh press conference other than what we already know.
    
Grass is green, rain is wet, and each game will be difficult.  
   
Hey, Jim, how are you going to prepare for Seattle, one of the loudest stadiums in the league?
  
“We’re going to prepare like we do for all our away games,” was the Harbaugh answer.
   
Thanks, that was informative.
    
Now and then, Harbaugh adds a fillip, as when asked about his quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, being voted NFC Offensive Player of the Week, for the four touchdown passes in the win over the Patriots.
   
“As always, we’re happy for the other guy’s success,” said Harbaugh. “And our team won a big game on the road. Great team victory. Sometimes a rising tide lifts all ships.”
   
Aye, aye, admiral.
   
Jim’s troops, well taught, are no more informative than their leader. You might say they are joined at the hip. Or the lip.
   
Kaepernick, asked if on the bus back to the airport in Boston, he thought to himself, “This was a pretty darn good game, worthy of that kind of award,” answered: “I was just happy we got the win.”
   
His predecessor, the now diminished Alex Smith, wasn’t much more outspoken – when he was starting. After he was benched, Alex came out with a legitimate gripe that he only thing he did wrong to lose his first-string spot was incur a concussion.
   
A coach’s first priority is to win games, of course, and as long as the Niners do so – ESPN’s Adam Schefter put them atop his NFL rankings this week – Harbaugh blithely will continue withholding what information he chooses.
 
Jim is a graduate, literally and symbolically, of the Bo Schembechler School, Michigan, where Bo coached Harbaugh – and Jack was an assistant – a place where both the opposition and the press were kept in the dark.
  
You want to learn about a Harbaugh team, watch the game. Bo was historically brief in his dealings with the press, which barely was allowed to do interviews after games. Harbaugh is brief, if not quite historically.
   
And while Harbaugh may quote from poets and poseurs, probably to tease, his own quotes are of little value.
  
What did (the 49er) defense do to succeed against QB Russell Wilson (of the Seahawks) the first time the teams played in October?
  
“Well, they made plays,” said Harbaugh, “We made plays.”
   
That’s usually what occurs in a football game.
    
For Harbaugh, as preached by Schembechler, “No man is more important than the team. No coach is more important than the team. The team. The team. The team.”
  
A fine concept, but obviously not entirely accurate. If Kaepernick were not more important, he wouldn’t be first string, having replaced Alex Smith. If Aldon Smith were not more important, the Niner defense wouldn’t be what it is.
        
Indeed, football is a team game, and a quarterback is nothing without an offensive line or receivers, while a linebacker requires other defenders to get his shots and his tackles. The Harbaugh argument – never given – would be with Kaepernick at QB, The Team is better than it was with the other guy, now consigned to stand and watch.
   
What, someone wondered, was Kaepernick’s reaction to being chosen the top NFC player? “Excited about it.”
  
Why? “I think it’s a great accolade for the team.”
   
No less an accolade for Kaepernick and Harbaugh.
  
“He’s crazy,” defensive tackle Ricky Jean-Francois, said of Harbaugh last year. “Plus, he’s comfortable with the way he is.”
  
A way that perhaps makes others, such as sports writers and TV and radio journalists uncomfortable.
  
“Jim, are you expecting a higher-scoring game this time around against Seattle?”
   
“It’s possible,’’ said Harbaugh.
    
Anything is possible, except the coach or his players offering in-depth information.
  
“Colin, you and Michael Crabtree work well together. What do you like about him as a receiver?”
   
“He catches the ball and makes plays after he catches it,” said Kaepernick.
   
As they tell you in English 101, make it clear and simple. Kaepernick and his coach have done that, so apparently criticism be damned.
 
The Niners will do what they must; their players will say what they’re allowed. Maybe their football, wins over the Patriots, the Packers, the Saints, all on the road, are more eloquent than any words.
  
“But Colin, we have this job, as you have your job, and if you were standing in our spot, what would you ask you?”
  
“The same questions every week like you all do,” said Kaepernick, and then he laughed.
  
Presumably the joke’s on us.

Copyright 2012 San Francisco Chronicle

S.F. Chronicle 49ers Insider: 49ers make a statement

By Art Spander
Special for 49ers Insider

It wasn’t so much that the 49ers didn’t miss a beat, more that Colin Kaepernick didn’t miss an opportunity – nor, rarely, a receiver -- and Aldon Smith didn’t miss Bears quarterback Jason Campbell.

The Niners’ class of ’11 proved very much the class of the game.

Nine days after San Francisco could do nothing more than gain a tie against the mediocre St. Louis Rams, it came back Monday night at the ’Stick and tied the Bears, the team some believed was superior to the Niners, in knots, 32-7.

It did so using a backup quarterback, Kaepernick, forced to start for a first time because Alex Smith’s concussion symptoms had not improved, and a virtually unmovable defense featuring Smith’s five and a half sacks.

It did so before a national TV audience, which surely had to agree with Smith’s dead-on assessment of the result when asked if the Niners made a statement: “I’d say so.”

Not only for a game, a game that lifted the Niners’ record to 7-2-1 to the Bears’ 7-3, but a season.

“Who’s got it better than us, nobody,’’ the crowd of 69,732, chanted in accompaniment to a repetitive video in the game’s final seconds, and indeed at the moment maybe nobody in the NFL has a better team than the 49ers.
  
And this side of the New York Jets, with their Mark Sanchez-Tim Tebow debate, maybe nobody now has a quarterback controversy like the Niners.
  
Kaepernick, the kid from Turlock and the University of Nevada, the Niners’ second-round pick in last year’s draft – Aldon Smith was the first-rounder – stepped in for Alex Smith and perhaps stepped up all the way to the top.
  
Not that San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh would say as much, insisting, “We’ll go with the quarterback with the hot hand, and we’ve got two quarterbacks with the hot hand.”
   
Kaepernick’s hand probably registered 212 degrees Fahrenheit. He connected on seven of his first eight pass attempts, 16 of 23 in all for 243 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. He finished with a passer rating of 133.1 – numbers reminiscent of Steve Young, who was doing the postgame show for ESPN.
  
“He did an outstanding job,” was the Harbaugh keep-it-cool observation. “Accuracy, poise in the pocket, play-making ability, understanding the game plan.”
  
What everyone must understand is that the Bears had the fifth-ranked defense in the league (the Niners were second) and led in takeaways, grabbing interceptions and fumbles.
   
But against Kaepernick and the Niners, they took nothing except a figurative punch to the ego.
   
Kaepernick threw the first play from scrimmage – “You expect they think you’re going to run with a backup quarterback,” Harbaugh explained – and kept throwing.
   
One of those passes was to Kyle Williams for 57 yards, a bomb, the sort Alex doesn’t throw. Another was a progression read to Michael Crabtree for 10 yards and a touchdown, the sort Alex does throw.
   
Kaepernick completed six, including one for a TD to Vernon Davis, who of late could have been reported to the Bureau of Missing Receivers.
   
This was as close to a perfect game as the Niners have played. The offensive line was effective. The defense was awesome. Numbers can be misleading, but these aren’t. At halftime, San Francisco had 249 total yards, Chicago 35.
  
“They started fast,” Bears coach Lovie Smith said of the 49ers, “and really kept us off balance through the night  . . . They had a quarterback that hadn’t played an awful lot, but he was on and looked like a seasoned vet from the start of the game. On the other side of the ball, we couldn’t get our running game going. We couldn’t protect our quarterback.”
  
Campbell, also a backup, for Jay Cutler, who as Alex Smith had a concussion, was sacked six times in all, Justin Smith getting the half to go with Aldon Smith’s 5.5 (All those Smiths are unrelated except for their ability to play football).
   
“I really just try to make people respect my power,” said Aldon Smith, who added, “I have a thing for night games. I love playing at night. I love the lights.”
  
They’re getting brighter, for all the Niners.
  
“Kaepernick played an amazing game,’’ said Aldon Smith. “Before the game I told him, ‘Don’t worry about the cameras, go play the game.’ And he put a good game together.”
  
It was a sensational game, a Tom Brady-Peyton Manning sort of game, but a game that, depending on Alex Smith’s health – Harbaugh told Kaepernick Sunday he would start – may not keep Colin in the lineup.
  
“I wanted to come out and show what I’m capable of and that I can be a starter,” said Kaepernick. “That’s what I’ve been trying to prove since I’ve been in the league.”
 
He proved it.

© 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.