By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — This is what the great ones do. They win a game that could have been lost, maybe should have been lost. The 49ers and their fans know all about it. They watched Joe Montana and Steve Young do it for them in the good old days.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Jimmy G made the ultimate observation: “We know why we’re here.” He and everyone else.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Our major sporting events are both a blessing and a curse. We choose to remember the victories. We can’t forget the losses.
For Kyle Shanahan, one defeat in particular stands out. So does one play.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — This time Richard Sherman had the stage to himself, as if it ever seems to matter. He’s one of a kind, a man who can talk a great game and play an even greater one, who went from the tough streets of Compton to the campus of elite Stanford and then to star in pro football.
Copyright 2020, The Maven
By Art Spander
For Maven Sports
MIAMI — Jimmy Garoppolo understands, which in the game of football is no less a measure of his position than an ability to perform.
Copyright 2020 The Maven
By Art Spander
MIAMI — Of course there was a question about the backpack. But by Deion Sanders.
Who better to exploit the silliness and salesmanship of the Super Bowl’s media function — relabled Opening Night — than a man who played in the game and now works for the NFL Network, Deion Sanders, old Prime Time himself?
Either Deion has been out of touch or the guys behind the telecast goaded him into asking Kyle Shanahan about the incident, but there was Deion standing next to Shanahan. Network types get individual access, which ordinary journalists do not.
So there is Sanders, who helped the 49ers win Super Bowl XXIX, right where No. LIV will be played Sunday — it’s now called Hard Rock Stadium, formerly Joe Robbie Stadium.
Let’s just say Deion was more impressive with a football in his hands than a microphone. But that doesn’t seem to matter.
Opening Night (sounds like an opera, not a media show) on Monday was at Marlins Park, the baseball stadium, appropriate perhaps because the one that was held three years ago, prior to Super Bowl LI, was at Minute Maid Park, where the Astros play home games.
Shanahan was offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, who would blow a big lead and lose to New England. But more significantly everyone knew he was about to be named the Niners' new coach.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but I came late, put down my backpack with my laptop and joined the group around Shanahan. Then, I picked up my backpack and went to write. Only, when someone tracked me down, it wasn’t my backpack, it was Shanahan’s.
Hey, it was dark and both packs were green. Both of us ended up with the proper backpacks. We’re three years on. But Shanahan has returned to a Super Bowl.
After Shanahan on Monday night tells Sanders there will be a different approach to this Super Bowl than the one three years ago, Deion casually mentions the backpack.
“I was pretty upset,” said Shanahan. “One minute I have it, the next minute it’s gone.” He wasn’t worried about the Patriots learning his game plan — “That was on an iPad and could be deleted” — but about the $15,000 in tickets he had acquired an hour earlier.
I never opened the pack. But I opened a wound. The story became huge. It’s still large. When half-jokingly a week ago, I asked Shanahan if for nostalgia’s sake he would bring the backpack to this Super Bowl, he said, “If I do, I’m going to keep it locked up to my arm so you can’t get it.”
Sanders, as if he had been on the moon, asked, “Wasn’t there an incident with a backpack? “
“Someone picked it up,” said the coach, cleverly using no names.
The issue now is not the backpack but quarterbacks and running backs. Can the Niners move the ball with the effectiveness they did against Green Bay in the NFC Championship game? San Francisco did it almost entirely on the ground.
Pack that up.