Woody and a Rose Bowl in the rain

PASADENA, Calif. — You know the song: “It Never Rains in Southern California — It Pours.” Written by a guy named Albert Hammond about not being able to find work in the movie business.

Could have been about the 1955 Rose Bowl game.

No question, the weather this time of year in SoCal is spectacular. For the most part, it’s blue skies. Chamber of Commerce stuff.

But as the lyrics of another song go, into each life (and region) some rain must fall — the “region” line is my own personal addition, because it was raining here on Thursday as far as the eye could see.

That was also the case more than 60 years ago for the event with the copyrighted nickname, “Grandaddy of Them All.”

The label was created by the good people around here because they believed the Rose Bowl, in a way responsible for the multitude of postseason college football matchups, was being pushed out of the headlines by lesser games.

But on that New Year’s Day, that afternoon in ’55, the Rose Bowl received attention it never wanted.

For the first time since 1934 and the last time ever — not counting some fourth-quarter heavy mist in 1996 — it rained on the Rose Bowl.

What a literal mess on the field. What a virtual stink caused by Woody Hayes.

He was a grumpy, demanding, un-merry old soul who coached Ohio State — which, interestingly enough, will play Utah on Saturday in the 2022 Rose Bowl.

In ’55 Hayes and Ohio State would beat USC, 20-7, but Woody was displeased because the Trojan band had been allowed to march at halftime on turf already soggy, thereby transforming the Buckeye attack to three yards and a clod of mud.

That was only one of the controversies for what, you should excuse the term, became a quagmire of a game.

USC shouldn’t even have played. UCLA not only was the No. 1 team in the land in the UPI poll but also the undefeated champion of the Pacific Coast Conference, from which the West Coast team in the Bowl normally would be chosen.

But the PCC had a no-repeat rule. UCLA had played (and lost to) Michigan State in the 1954 Rose Bowl. Thus USC got the call.

That game was our first formal introduction to Woody, who the late Jim Murray once said was graceless in victory, graceless in defeat. Hayes once punched Los Angeles Times photographer Art Rogers when Rogers, doing his job, aimed a camera at Hayes.

My job at the Rose Bowl, before I became a journalist, was to peddle programs. The first Rose Bowl game I worked, 1954, I ended up with $10 and, because the goal posts were made of wood and people could swarm the field, a few memorable slivers. I was in high school and thrilled.

But one year later, everything was different. Before that 1955 game, the heavens opened up around 10:30 in the morning. I was unprepared. So was everyone else.

The usual 100,000 tickets had been sold (at $15 each, if I recall), but attendance was around 89,000. As I slogged through the stadium trying to sell before the game started, a spectator stopped me and asked if I wanted to buy a ticket for 25 cents. No thanks.

I was wearing one of those high school letterman-type jackets, blue with fake leather sleeves over a required white dress shirt.

By the time I left, the shirt was blue from the jacket color leaking. I had earned $1.25. Happy New Year. Glub.

John Madden was different because he was ordinary

So here was this sports columnist sitting in a lineup of cars trying to get to the Bay Bridge toll plaza. And three lanes to his right, there’s a guy repeatedly honking his horn for apparently no reason.

The columnist finally looks over, and it’s John Madden, waving and laughing. He had seen me as we drove west from Oakland to San Francisco. No pretension, just joy.

Madden, who died Tuesday at 85, was special because he was ordinary, at least away from the field, a size extra-large blend of curiosity and commentary.

He knew the game of football, winning Super Bowl XI as coach of the Oakland Raiders. He also understood the game of life: Be friendly as much as possible.

He was born in Minnesota but virtually was a Northern Californian, growing up in Daly City, graduating from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and eventually ending up in the East Bay community of Pleasanton — where, in the manner of the pioneers, he grabbed vacant fields that quickly enough became valuable property.

John could be demanding. There are stories about his impatience with others in broadcasting. Yet most of all, in person or behind a microphone, he made you feel good.

I was the Raiders beat man for the San Francisco Chronicle for a while in the early 1970s, and he didn’t always like what I wrote — which didn’t make him unusual in the profession.

What did make him unusual was the way he responded. Some coaches claim they never read the papers. Madden would come at me after practice, waving the Chron sports page.

Then he would sit me down and explain what was wrong, so I wouldn’t make the same mistake again. An education. 

In those days, the Raiders took the writers on their charters for road trips, the better for the papers to save travel expenses. As soon as the flight was in the air and the seat belt sign was off, Madden would stand up and march to the front or rear of the aircraft.

As we learned, Madden disliked flying. After he left Cal Poly, a football team charter crashed in 1960. Numerous players, friends of Madden, died. The accident haunted him.

He also was claustrophobic, feeling trapped in a silver capsule, and as soon as he left the Raiders for broadcasting, Madden switched first to a train and then a bus — the Madden Cruiser.

He was adept at describing the quarterback draw — his signature remark after a big gain was empathic and brief: “Boom.”

He fit in everywhere and with everyone, working TV with Pat Summerall and then Al Michaels; getting off the bus at stops in various places and dining and chatting with the locals.

His daily show on the San Francisco radio station KCBS offered Madden at his eclectic best, moving from sports to food to weather to geography.

Once, relating to rivers, Madden said he was uncertain about the word “confluence,” as to the linking of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers to form the Ohio River in Pittsburgh. “So, that’s a confluence,” he repeated, having as much fun as the listeners.

John Robinson was Madden’s pal from their days as kids and teenagers in Daly City. They were both football people — Robinson became head coach at USC and later the Rams.

“We’d go to an ice cream store,” Madden remembered of their boyhood. “I’d buy a cone, and he’d always take a bite; to stop him I’d lick the whole thing, but John Robinson would eat it anyway. He was different.”

So was John Madden. John, that will be me honking in salute the next time I cross the Bay Bridge.

Is Garoppolo just another Steve DeBerg?

An individual who has followed the 49ers for years has an idea about Jimmy Garoppolo: “He reminds me of Steve DeBerg,” said the individual.

For those unfamiliar with DeBerg, that’s not exactly high praise. Or complete disparagement.

DeBerg had a lengthy career in the NFL, three years of which (1978-80) he spent with the 49ers at the start of the Bill Walsh era, which began in 1979.

The Niners would move the ball, and then in a critical situation DeBerg would be intercepted. He invariably made the big mistake.

As Garoppolo did Thursday night when San Francisco couldn’t hold on to a 10-0 halftime lead and was beaten 20-17 by the Tennessee Titans. 

Jimmy G threw a couple of interceptions, one from Tennessee’s 8-yard line in the first period, and also missed an open man in the end zone in the second half. And while the defense, the Niners’ strength, could be faulted, the quarterback’s failures were inescapable.

“I thought we should have been up more, that was for sure,” was the assessment of head coach Kyle Shanahan. “I thought we could have got three scores with those drives. We didn’t.”

Not with Garoppolo missing receivers or, worst of all, throwing when nobody was open and no worse than a field goal assured — unless the other team gets the ball.

Which it did to halt two of the chances.

So maybe it’s unfair in a team sport in which offense, defense and special teams are involved. But one man has the ball and decides what he’s going to do with it.

“We were rolling early on,” said Garoppolo, “and in the middle just kind of got a little sluggish. It’s tough when you let a win like this slip away.”   

Tougher when literally you throw it away.

Turnovers are killers at every level of football. The Niners had two, the interceptions, the Titans zero.

The Niners are 8-7 this season and still in the wild-card chase. But they are 1-6 when Garoppolo throws at least one interception, as opposed to 7-0 when he doesn’t have one.

Jimmy G was the quarterback for a Niners team in a Super Bowl, something DeBerg was unable to accomplish. Yet the Patriots traded Garoppolo to San Francisco when he seemed to be the heir apparent to Tom Brady.

One wonders if Patriots coach Bill Belichick sensed a deficiency.

The future of Garoppolo’s career with the Niners is a mystery. The Niners traded three first-round selections to Miami for the right to make the pick in April that brought them quarterback Trey Lance.

Shanahan and his staff determined Garoppolo this year would be more efficient than a rookie, no matter how qualified and regarded Lance might be.

That followed the Bill Walsh philosophy. He suffered through the DeBerg seasons while Joe Montana was getting acclimated and confident.

A week ago, Garoppolo was exactly what he needed to be, the Niners winning at Cincinnati. Four days later, he was a quarterback who put his team in distress.

This Sunday, San Francisco has a bye, a time perhaps to reflect and second-guess. The season continues with a home game against the woeful Texans and then one at L.A. against the Rams.  

The presumption is Garoppolo will start at quarterback in both. And that he’ll play well enough to get his team to the postseason.

Then probably, Trey Lance takes over.

But who knows how good Lance might be — the next Tom Brady or the next Jimmy Garoppolo, who was supposed to take over for Brady but never did?

Down the stretch, Garoppolo performed like Montana

Agreed, he’s not Joe Montana. But the way Jimmy Garoppolo performed down the stretch Sunday, completing passes, leading the Niners from behind in overtime to a victory, was — dare we say — very reminiscent of Joe.

Jimmy G. won a game the San Francisco 49ers very much needed, a game it seemed they had let slip away and then wrenched back from the Cincinnati Bengals on the road.

He wasn’t alone. Joe Montana wasn’t alone. Tom Brady isn’t alone. John Elway wasn’t alone. Football is a team game, and a game of ebbs and flows, when the opportunity must be grabbed or it will lay groaning as a painful memory.

The memory of the Niners’ 26-23 victory on Sunday touches back to the good old days of comebacks and championships, of making the right calls and the right plays.

That in the great scheme of this NFL season the game may turn out to be insignificant doesn’t matter. When the oft-criticized Garoppolo had to get a win, he got it, in conjunction with Deebo Samuel and Nick Bosa and Brandon Aiyuk — and certainly and demonstratively, the amazing George Kittle.

There, late in the afternoon at Cincinnati, were the erratic Niners, failing to take the game when Robbie Gould’s 43-yard field goal try at the end of regulation was wide; quickly behind, 23-20, when the Bengals made their own 3-pointer; pulling it out when, with virtually no time remaining, Aiyuk shoved the ball over the goal line as he flew into space.

It wasn’t beautiful, but it was successful. The saying in golf is applicable, “It ain’t how, it’s how many.” There’s no judging of form, just a display of the final score.

As a relieved Niners coach, Kyle Shanahan, conceded. 

Garoppolo botched things a week ago against Seattle, and there were other games when he couldn’t bring it home (even after the win, San Francisco is just 7-6, although very much a wild card possibility). 

This time with plenty of assistance from the offensive line, the receivers and the game plan, Garoppolo hit one pass after another. Or handed off to Samuel or Jeff Wilson. There was a sense of purpose and feeling of confidence.

“We kept saying that we’ve been in this situation before,” Garoppolo explained about the drive. “No one blinked. Guys knew that we had been here before, and we’ve done this before.”

True, but until you do it correctly, pulling out a game that seemingly was lost, it’s just rehearsal.

“We’ve just got to do this game,” said Garoppolo.

They did in no small part due to Kittle, the tight end who snares passes, batters potential tacklers and just generally makes the 49ers formidable and fearsome.

“That dude is the one Shanahan describe as a violent blocker and violent receiver” Aiyuk said of Kittle. “Not a bad combination. That dude is special.“

Kittle would just as soon hit possible defenders as catch a football, a trend coaches find perfect for a tight end, not that George shies away from getting a ball in his hands.

Against the Bengals, Kittle caught 13 passes for 151 yards, a touchdown and two first downs on third-down situations. “When you have a guy like him, you lean on him,” said Garoppolo.

If you didn’t, you’d better get a new job. Back when the Niners had Jerry Rice, and failed to target him, John Madden would growl, “He’s your best weapon. He needs the ball.”

What the 49ers needed was this victory, achieved in part because Cincy fumbled away two first-quarter punts and in part because Jimmy Garoppolo did what a 49er quarterback is expected to do.

Win the game the way Joe Montana used to do.

No trombone, but for Cal a win over Stanford

STANFORD — The band wasn’t on the field. But the football was. Or jn the other team’s hands after an interception.

This was the 124th Big Game, which was great and historic, if you’re interested in that stuff. But for the sporting world — especially for those beyond the bay — there only will be one memorable game.

That would be the one in 1982, when Cal won on that miraculous (poorly officiated, the Stanford people will argue) multi-lateral kickoff return, when announcer Joe Starkey gave what seems is the most incongruous call ever in college football: “The band is on the field!”

In this year’s matchup, there was nothing quite as interesting or debatable — did the knee of one Cal returner touch the ground before the end of the kickoff return that gave the Bears the 25-20 win?

Nothing that would get ESPN, which normally doesn’t pay attention to what happens out here in the West, to show rerun after rerun.

This Big Game, which Cal won 41-11 on a cool Saturday before 49,265 at Stanford Stadium, wasn’t quite that compelling. Or controversial.

Or even competitive. But how could it be? How could anything be?

At the end of that run, Cal’s Kevin Moen crashed into Stanford band member Gary Tyrrell, who along others in his group had marched onto field to celebrate.

Before the kickoff, Tyrrell was despised by Stanford types, who believed his presence in the end zone was a reflection of imperfection.

But over the years attitudes changed, even if the score didn’t.

Now a financial consultant, Tyrrell lives in Half Moon Bay and is involved with the Stanford program. “Rivals, and kindred spirits. Honor the game. Beat Cal,” he tweeted prior to Stanford failing to beat Cal.

The trombone is in the College Football Hall of Fame.

John Elway was the Stanford quarterback in that 1982 Big Game. The defeat cost him and the Cardinal a chance for the Rose Bowl. Tyrrell, meanwhile, got over the game quickly enough, doing public appearances with Moen, the guy who knocked him and his trombone for a loop.

“In getting to know Gary, I have found him to be a nice, diligent, normal guy,” said Moen, now a real estate broker in Rolling Hills Estates.

Elway needed years to forgive. At last he mellowed, after leading the Denver Broncos to Super Bowl victories, and conceded to Jackie Kretzman in a piece for Stanford Alumni Magazine, “It gets funnier as the years go along.”

There was nothing humorous for the referee, Charles Moffett, who was chased down by an outraged Paul Wiggin, the Stanford coach. But after conferring with the other officials, Moffett ruled that the TD counted.

“You would have thought I had started World War III,” said Moffett.

What “The Play” started was a sort of cottage industry. Cal would sell a gold T-shirt on which a diagram of the runners’ route and the final score was printed. The shirt has become a collectors’ item and still is sold.

Yes, I was there. Yes, I still have the T-shirt.

It was one of those sporting events that remind people in a stadium never to leave until the game is over. Which the late, great Art Rosenbaum, at the time sports editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, did unfortunately.

Stanford had kicked a field goal to go in front, and there were only seconds remaining.

But Cal took the subsequent kickoff, and every time it appeared a Bears runner would get tackled he flipped the ball backward or sideways until Moen crossed the goal — winning the game and denting a trombone.

Oh, if only that could have happened this time.

Niners go back to who they are

The man on ESPN sounded as baffled as he was impressed: “They did not look like this last week.” He meant the 49ers, of course,

And to that observation we add, nor any week in the last year.

The Niners had gone 390 days since a win at Levi’s Stadium, their home. Then they played their patsies, the Los Angeles Rams.

We modify the cliché — let’s make it “on any given Monday.” On this Monday, the 49ers gave it to the Rams, winning 31-10, ending a streak of eight straight losses at Levi’s and continuing a streak of wins over the Rams, now six. 

There was a lot in print and on TV the past few days about the Rams, Hollywood’s team if you will, mostly for acquiring that receiver with the flair, flash and catchy name, Odell Beckham Jr., a.k.a. OBJ (yes, too many initials, but that’s our world). Headline stuff. OBJ, we were told, was the final piece in the puzzle, the guy who was going to get the Rams to the coming Super Bowl — which conveniently will be played at the Rams’ $5 billion SoFi Stadium.

OBJ may indeed help get the Rams to the NFL Championship, but he couldn’t do much about getting L.A. out of the pit in which he and the Rams found themselves in against San Francisco.

There are 60 minutes in a game. On Monday night, the Niners had the ball 39 minutes 3 seconds of those 60.

Hang on to the ball, pick off a couple of Rams passes (both by Jimmy Ward, one of which was returned for a touchdown, the infamous pick six) and you can’t lose.

“They went back to who they are,” said Louis Riddick, who analyzes for NBC Sports Bay Area.

Or who they were.

Maybe you missed the grumbling from fans and media because of the attention to OBJ — hard to ignore ESPN — but there was great disenchantment with the 49ers, beginning with head coach Kyle Shanahan.

A team that had been considered a probability for the postseason was 2-4 and at the bottom of NFC West.

And besides that, the Niners looked so awful against Arizona a week ago, one supporter emailed that he switched channels to some music program.

What to do? The old cure.

“We went back to basics,” said quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. Meaning plays that would succeed. Taking opportunities not chances.

Garoppolo, who gets his share of criticism, was effective, completing his first 12 passes and 15 of 19. When Deebo Samuel wasn’t catching the ball, he was running with it.

The Niners, perhaps as much in frustration as determination, pounded away. Woody Hayes, he of the three yards and a cloud of dust, would have been overjoyed.

It isn’t too much of a reach to say Shanahan was.

The Niners had 156 yards rushing, the Rams 52. Passing? The Rams had 226 to San Francisco’s 179. OBJ had two receptions for 18 yards.

You might say the Niners were fighting to keep their jobs.  What Shanahan would say was, “The whole team has to play that way, offense, defense, special teams.”

The game plan was simple — and brilliant. Keep the ball and keep the opponent off balance.

“The Rams are a real good team,” said Shanahan, “but we were excited to play them.” Given history, it’s easy to understand why.

“I think we took a lot of things personally,” said Shanahan. “We were very aware. We wanted to make the game as physical as possible. But our physical guys also have some skill sets.”

They can maneuver. They can think. They also can grasp the disappointment — disgust, even — engendered by going winless game after game on their home turf.

“There are no secrets to what we did,” said Garoppolo. “We were just locked in.”

After figuratively being locked out for 390 days.

Niners can’t pass the eye test — or the football

You’ve heard the term in advertising: Eye test. Never mind the numbers or opinion of others. Do you like what you see? If you don’t, what else do you need to know?

The 49ers these days can’t pass the eye test. (That at times they can’t pass the football either is part of the problem.)

The Niners don’t look good. Which is being kind.

If you stayed with the Niners on Sunday as they failed to stay with the Arizona Cardinals, you can understand why head coach Kyle Shanahan said he was disappointed. He also said a lot more after the 31-17 loss at Levi’s Stadium.

He told us the Niners didn’t tackle well. Couldn’t stop the run. Didn’t stop the screen pass.

But that was very clear in the eye test.

San Francisco was outplayed from start to finish, giving away the ball on two fumbles and an interception; giving away big chunks of yardage on first downs.

What’s happened to a team many thought would be a contender for the Super Bowl but now is 3-5 and hasn’t won a home game since last season is a legitimate question.

Without easy answers. Maybe without answers of any kind.

Something is very wrong, and it isn’t necessarily quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo or Shanahan or the defense or the offensive line, but undeniably all are involved. In other words, bringing in Trey Lance isn’t going to make things better quickly.

The factors that combined to get the Niners to the Super Bowl only a couple of years ago, the ones that enable a team to succeed, controlling the ball, preventing the opponent from doing the same, have vanished like the thoughts of another championship.

Eye test: The Cardinal team on the field Sunday lacked Kyler Murray, the quarterback who runs like a halfback, wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins and all-pro defensive end J.J. Watt.

Obviously, that didn’t matter, because the Niner team on the field lacked willpower.

Every team has downers. Nobody wins them all, and on Sunday the Rams, arguably the best team in the NFL and the Niners’ next opponent, were defeated at home by the Tennessee Titans.

Yet, the 49ers were sad reminders of what used to be, a franchise that over the years may have struggled but at least had a chance to win.

The Niners, down 17-0 all so quickly, never had a chance in this one, and if Shanahan didn’t say that directly he very much implied it.

Kyle is perceptive enough to understand that if he can see what was going on, so could those at the stadium or watching on TV.

Coaches or baseball managers brought in by organizations where winning isn’t so much expected as demanded inevitably say it’s the city’s team and they’re merely caretakers.

It’s obvious in this disappointing season of 2021, to borrow from Kyle Shanahan, that nobody is taking care of a football team with a proud past.

“We couldn’t stop the run,” said Shanahan. “All those free yards. We couldn’t keep them from less than five yards on first down. Couldn’t stop the screen passes. We’ve got to make those plays..

“And on offense we dropped the ball. We fumbled, then we fumbled again.”

Tight end George Kittle, out the past few weeks, returned and after a reception was one of the fumblers. Brandon Aiyuk was the other.

The interception, of course, came from Garoppolo, trailing late when everybody — including the Cardinals — knew the Niners had to pass.

There’s an axiom in sports that it takes a long while to become a champion, but you regress to failure all too quickly.

The 49ers lead the league in turnover differential, their negative total growing by three against the Cardinals.

“I think this year with turnovers,” conceded pass rusher Nick Bosa, ”we’re not getting them, and we’re giving them up too much. That’s a big sign of a losing team. And that’s what we are right now.”

As we could see all too well.

Mystery solved for Niners: it’s Trey Lance; is he the right man?

All we wanted to know was who the 49ers would select. Todd McShay of ESPN told us it would be Trey Lance, and Mel Kiper of the same network said it would be Mac Jones. Of course we had to stay tuned, as much to find out who was wrong as to learn who would be the Niners QB after Jimmy G — whenever that inevitability takes place.

But darn if that didn’t take in more time than one of those Super Bowl halftime shows.

The NFL knows how to lure us in and hold on, through country singers, the presentation of the colors and, how appropriate, a Draft Kings commercial.

We know now: Trey Lance.

Sorry, Mr. Kiper. The Niners, who traded three first-round picks for the one they used to take Lance, have to hope they’re not sorry.

Lance played only 17 games at North Dakota State, whose football history doesn’t exactly remind anyone of the schools from which the two players, both quarterbacks, picked ahead of Lance, were taken: No. 1 Trevor Lawrence of Clemson, No. 2 Zach Wilson of BYU.

But Phil Simms went to Morehead State in Kentucky and led the New York Giants to Super Bowl wins.

Joe Montana was a third-round pick and Tom Brady a sixth-round pick, although these days, with changes in the game, a need for more mobile quarterbacks who can escape the rush — as Patrick Mahomes does — top prospects don’t slip that far.

The only thing certain is that Garoppolo, who some predicted would either be traded perhaps to the Patriots, from where the Niners got him, or waived, will be starting the 2021 season as San Francisco’s quarterback. Trey Lance might be the quarterback of the future, but with lack of experience, the future isn’t now.

Mac Jones led Alabama to an undefeated season and a national championship. Yet Niners coach Kyle Shanahan, known as a quarterback specialist, and general manager John Lynch obviously believe in Lance’s potential — and that Garoppolo, who led the team to one Super Bowl, will be more than adequate for a year or two.

Toss Justin Fields of Ohio State into the mix of Niner possible draftees, along with Jones and Lance, until a few days ago, at least, and the impression was that Lance was below the other two.

“I’d be surprised if it’s Trey Lance, unless they decide to go with Jimmy G for another year,” was what NFL Network commentator and former 49er head coach Steve Maricucci told the San Jose Mercury News.

“If they are (keeping Garoppolo, as advertised), any of them could fit. If not, and somebody wants him and grabs Jimmy for a second-round pick, Trey Lance has the most work to do to start in the NFL. Not only did he not play last year (other than one game), he played at another level (FCS) and has the most catching up to do. It would benefit him a lot to sit and watch a veteran guy. All of these quarterbacks would benefit from that.”

You need more than a quarterback — the Chiefs lost in the Super Bowl in February because the offensive line was inadequate. Still, most of all you need a quarterback. He wins the games you should have lost. Lynch and Shanahan decided it was time to acquire that quarterback.

Lance is 6-foot-4 and rushed for 1,100 yards in his lone full season as a starter. He’s known for his football intelligence. And didn’t throw an interception in 287 pass attempts.

“He’s played a year of football (and) it is at a smaller school,” Shanahan said. “So it takes work. You’re not going to see it all. It is a hard process, and that there is no guarantee for any of us. So it’s about believing. You see what they asked him to do. And you see it very consistently done at a high level.”

One mystery is solved. We know the Niners’ next QB. Another remains: Is he the right man?

Jets' pick of Darnold should make 49ers wary of a QB

The safest quarterback prospect in the draft. That was the observation in a New York daily about Sam Darnold, on the day he was taken by the Jets in April 2018. “The Darnold era has begun,” said the story.

That it may end prematurely is a reminder and a warning.

The Jets traded up in that draft to get the No. 3 overall selection, to get the man they wanted — “the arm, the legs and temperament to be a franchise quarterback.”

Three years later, amid much glee and explanation, it is the San Francisco 49ers who have traded up to the No. 3 overall selection to get, well, we learn in April, but presumably a quarterback. Depending on who is available, it might be Zach Wilson of BYU, Justin Fields of Ohio State, Trey Lance of North Dakota State or Mac Jones of Alabama.

The chosen individual — dare we designate him as a “franchise quarterback”? — will be expected to lead the Niners to the Super Bowl. Which, two seasons past, Jimmy Garoppolo did. That was so long ago, and in the NFL, there’s nothing constant except change.

Other than Tom Brady, of course, and he was a sixth-round pick and at age 43 still brilliant. So much for probability.

If nothing else, and when the situation involves the 49ers there’s always something else, the trade for that No. 3 overall selection has put the team back in the Bay Area headlines, in front of the Warriors and, even though the season is about to begin, in front of baseball.

Where, with all the speculation about who will be their pick and probably their star, the Niners will stay for months, if not forever. 

The new guy will be labeled the “next Joe Montana,” naturally because he was not only the franchise QB but through adulation dubbed “St. Joe.”

But what if he doesn’t become a champion, much less another sporting saint? There are no guarantees.

Darnold has been less than hoped for. Talk continues that he might be traded. It’s been awhile since Ryan Leaf was the No. 2 overall pick and maybe the No. 1 overall bust. And only weeks ago, the Rams gave up on Jared Goff, No. 1 overall in 2016, and traded him to the Detroit Lions for Matthew Stafford.

Owners are impatient, not to mention oil-sheik wealthy. This makes general managers impatient. This makes coaches impatient. This makes players uncomfortable. Just don’t look over your shoulder — unless you’re about to be sacked.

The Niners’ GM John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan were looking ahead after looking around. All those other teams, excluding Tampa Bay and Brady, had young first-round picks at QB: Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Goff.  

Garoppolo is out again? Have to move. Now.

“You hope to be competing, to get into the playoffs every single year, which is the ultimate goal,” said Shanahan, Niners coach for a fifth season.

“The more you look at this league. especially our four years here, it’s hard to succeed when your starting quarterback doesn’t stay healthy,” emphasized Shanahan. “He’s played at a very high level when he’s played.”

When he hasn’t played, the idea to develop a replacement for Jimmy G. became a necessity. And surely that replacement had to be developed from a prospect who will be a high pick in the coming draft.

When you trade away first-round choices, you’re thinking less of what you never had than what you will have, a player on the roster. How can you lose what you never had? 

The Niners, the way the team was built, seemingly believed they lost games they should have won. A quarterback could change that. If he’s not the wrong one.

If Pats get Garoppolo, who plays QB for Niners?

So the New England Patriots would like to have Jimmy Garoppolo as their quarterback, according to a Boston journalist — as if any journalist knows what he’s writing or talking about — and that leaves us with one question.

Who would play quarterback for the 49ers, the team to which Garoppolo now is under contract?

It certainly won’t be Dak Prescott, who on Tuesday re-signed with the Dallas Cowboys for four years and a mere $160 million.

Or Russell Wilson, desperate to escape Seattle, which apparently no longer trusts in his capability but did not list the Niners among the teams he finds acceptable.

Or Aaron Rodgers, now that management at Green Bay has given him the ringing endorsement he deserves.

These are days of instability and outrageous dreams in the NFL, particularly when it comes to quarterbacks, whom we know — despite homilies to the contrary — are the most important guys in the offensive lineup.

Consider the Patriots with Tom Brady. Six Super Bowl victories. Consider the Patriots without Tom Brady. So awful that, if we believe Greg Bredard of the Boston Sports Journal, the Pats want Jimmy.

Who was drafted by them in 2014 with the idea of him eventually becoming Brady’s replacement; who was traded to the 49ers after a few games in 2017 when it became obvious Brady never would need a replacement as long as he was with New England; who led the Niners to the Super Bowl in 2019; who was out much of 2020 with a leg injury, bringing about demands for a change; who now is a target of the Patriots to fill the role for which he first was labeled, Brady’s successor. 

The only things certain at the moment are the Patriots, ineffective in 2020 with Cam Newton botching up the position, do not have a quarterback; and the 49ers, with two years remaining on Garoppolo’s five-year, $137.5 million contract, do have one.

Is it the one they prefer? Well, the Niners insist Garoppolo is their man. That means he is. Until he isn’t.

“Do I believe 49ers general manager John Lynch when he claims that Garoppolo will be his starter in 2021? Of course not,” NFL insider Michael Lombardi recently wrote in The Athletic.

“They are too active, too aggressive to run it back one more year with someone they don’t have complete trust in.”

The 49ers have called the Panthers about Teddy Bridgewater, according to The Athletic, another sign they’re looking for a new quarterback.

Two of the four teams in the Niners’ division, the NFC West, have either obtained a new quarterback for 2021 (the Rams trading for Matthew Stafford) or will need to obtain one (the Seahawks, mentioned above).

The Rams had Jared Goff, the overall No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft who led them to the Super Bowl in 2018. Such a wonderful future. Or so it seemed. A few bad plays, and, voila, Goff was sent to the Lions for Stafford — who has played in one Super Bowl fewer than Garoppolo. None.

And five fewer than Joe Montana, against whom everyone from now until forever any 49ers quarterback will be rated.

Joe often was hesitant to give opinions when he played, but now, out of the game, his status quite safe, he is more outspoken.

“You know the biggest question on everybody’s mind is Garoppolo, and can they keep him healthy,” Montana told Can Inman, the longtime Niners writer for the San Jose Mercury News.

“Obviously they’re a better team when he’s playing, but who knows what goes in those guys’ minds?”

What goes is to employ a quarterback who wins games, maybe directs his team to the Super Bowl.

As Garoppolo did two years ago. And as the Patriots are well aware.

Bucs win belongs as much to Bowles as Brady

By Art Spander

Tom Brady was the MVP, of course, because the prediction was that Super Bowl LV either was going to belong to him or the shell-shocked kid on the other side, Patrick Mahomes. And yes, Brady is the greatest ever.

But this one, this mismatch, no less belongs to Todd Bowles as it does to Brady.

Bowles is the Tampa Bay Bucs’ defensive coordinator, the guy who designed the formations and called the plays that for the first time in the season of 2020, really the the first time in the career for young Mr. Mahomes, left him virtually helpless and hopeless.
 Never in his brief career had Mahomes, harassed, chased, and sacked, been unable to create a single touchdown.

Tampa Bay limited K.C. to three field goals in its overwhelming 31-9 victory.

Brady will get the attention, and unquestionably he deserves it, quarterback on the winning Super Bowl team for a record seventh time, having wisely joined the Bucs last spring as a free agent after 20 years with the New England Patriots.

Brady threw three touchdown passes, two to his once and current teammate, tight end Rob Gronkowski. Offense glows, but as we’ve been told, defense wins.

“Todd Bowles, Todd Bowles,” Devin White, the Bucs linebacker, said to CBS-TV. “He did it.”

Bowles once was head coach of the New York Jets, and there was a report before the kickoff of the Super Bowl that if the Bucs won, Bruce Arians would retire as Tampa Bay head coach and Bowles would replace him.

Arians denied as much after the game, for now at least, saying, “This is fun. This is what I wanted.”

For a long while. At 68, Arians is the oldest coach in the NFL. And now, certainly, the most elated.

Particularly since his Bucs not only won, but since the game was played at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, where because of the pandemic there were more cardboard cutouts than live fans, also won the first Super Bowl held in a home stadium.

Kansas City was the defending champion and a narrow favorite (3 points). But after taking a 3-0 lead, the Chiefs were barely in the game. They struggled with a patch-up offensive line, true, but in truth they struggled with the Bucs’ relentless pursuit

There were reminders of Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium, when the Denver Broncos, underdogs, stopped a brilliant Carolina Panthers offense and Cam Newton.

Somehow these defensive coaches, with a two-week window between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, figure out how to unnerve the big boys — like Mahomes.

“Our timing was not there,” said Mahomes, who was 26 of 49 for 243 yards. He was sacked three times and intercepted twice.

Their timing wasn’t there because invariably someone from the Bucs — White, Antoine Winfield — was there, in their face. Mahomes, known for his scrambling, could not escape. Tampa defenders went wide, Mahomes not knowing which way to go.

“Give them credit,” said Mahomes about the Bucs.

So we will, as we give Brady credit, a 43-year-old who seems destined to play until he’s 53. The Serra High (San Mateo) grad is the essence of confidence and reliability. Wisdom and guile, goes the aphorism, make up for age and immobility.

Arians knew last spring he needed a quarterback, and when the Patriots decided for one reason or another not to bring back Brady, the Bucs had one. And now, after languishing since winning the 2003 Super Bowl, they have another title.

Tom indeed is one of a kind, and brought to the same franchise where Todd Bowles put together the defense, it’s a perfect union.

One knows the way to get points, the other the way to keep from getting them.

A super matchup of quarterbacks in the Super Bowl

By Art Spander

It’s about the quarterback. Isn’t it always? It’s about Joe Montana or Terry Bradshaw or John Elway. Or Sunday in Super Bowl LV, Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes.

Decision maker. Play caller. Man in bubble. Man under pressure.

Brady, 43, arguably the best ever; Mahomes, 25, arguably the best now.

Such a disparity in ages. Such a similarity in production.

So much is made of quarterbacks, yet it never can be too much. Montana was the reason the 49ers became champs. Bradshaw was the Steelers’ anchor, Elway the force on the Broncos.

There’s never been a great team without a great quarterback. Defense may dominate — it won Super Bowl 50 for the Broncos. The other team will have the ball.

But what you do when you have the ball? That’s where the quarterback makes the difference. As Brady completing 43 of 62 attempts in New England’s comeback win over Atlanta in Super Bowl LI made a difference. As Mahomes completing passes to lead K.C. from behind in the fourth quarter to beat the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV made a difference.

Now with possibly the best Super Bowl quarterback matchup of all time, Brady of Tampa Bay vs. Mahomes of Kansas City — yes, Montana vs. Dan Marino in XIX is up there — the question is who will be the difference maker?

Mahomes has the arm, as well as the legs. He’s stronger, longer and, when needing to escape or run the ball, faster. Brady, in his 10th Super Bowl, is wiser.

Mahomes was MVP of last year’s Super Bowl in Miami. Brady has been MVP of multiple Super Bowls — his team, the New England Patriots, winner in six of them.

The Chiefs liked what was available. Mahomes lasted until the 10th pick of the 2017 draft (the Bears took QB Mitch Trubisky with the second overall pick).

The Bucs knew what they needed in the spring of 2020, a free agent quarterback. “Of course it was Tom Brady,” said coach Bruce Arians, “not thinking he would become a free agent.”

Brady became one, after 20 years with New England, and Arians reacted. “That’s how you live life,” Arians explained. “Do you sit and live in a closet and try to be safe, or do you go have some fun?”

The answer is written not on the wind but in the wins.

“I looked at the whole situation,” Brady said after signing with Tampa Bay. “There were a lot of reasons to come here.” Not the least of which was a two-year, $50 million contract.

Mahomes in July signed a 10-year $500 million contract, which, if it goes to completion and he stays healthy and interested, would make him a free agent at 35.  Presumably Brady will be retired by then, but one never knows.

What we do know, not surprisingly, is that both Mahomes and Brady seem as impressed with the style and results of each other as the performances would indicate.

“You’re crazy,” said Mahomes, “if you don’t look up to Tom Brady as a young athlete. He’s the type of greatness you strive to be. It’s going to be a great opportunity for me to get to play against Tom, an all-time great, the GOAT (greatest of all time), everything like that.”

Brady, a sixth-round pick in 2000, surely looks at Mahomes and pictures himself. The way it was, the way it is and maybe the way it will be.

Said Brady of Mahomes, “I think he’s got the ability to focus when the moments are the biggest. That’s probably the mark of any great athlete, coming through in the clutch. I think he’s off to a great start in his career doing that.”

The chance for Mahomes to continue comes in a Super Bowl against Brady. What a matchup. It’s always the quarterback.

Goodell on Brady (the greatest) and Kaepernick (unrecognized)

By Art Spander

He is the son of a politician, a U.S. Senator from New York. No surprise that Roger Goodell can maneuver so well through the tough times — and yes, the most important sporting league in America has them — and the difficult questions.

He is 61. NFL commissioner for some 14 years, paid enormously ($40 million annually) and, when needed, able to slip past the criticism and doubt like a great running back through would-be tacklers.

This is Goodell’s week, the annual week for the Super Bowl, “America’s Great Time Out,” it’s been labeled. And Goodell, as did his recent predecessors, the late Pete Rozelle and John Tagliabue, gets his glory and his grief, the latter when he addresses and responds to the media.

Rozelle, eagerly — hey, he helped create the Super Bowl back in 1966 — and Tagliabue, reluctantly, held their sessions on the Friday before the game. A couple years back, Goodell switched it to Thursday.

He was well prepared this Thursday. He’s always well prepared.

A one-time prep football star in suburban New York — Goodell’s career at Washington & Jefferson College was ruined by an injury — he pays attention both to game plans and possibilities.

Very little catches him off guard, whether it’s the understandably repetitive queries about the lack of African American coaches for a league in which 70 percent of the players are black; or the somewhat oddball query whether Tampa, host for this Sunday’s Super Bowl LV, will get the game in a “normal,” year, not haunted by the pandemic, when fans again will be permitted.   

"I don't know when normal will occur again," Goodell confided.

Nor, he could have added, does anyone else.

The new normal, if that’s the proper label, is to have as many media on Zoom calls as are in the room. Yes, journalists from some locations were there in flesh and blood. But so were journalists from as far away from Florida as Great Britain, via video conferencing.

Each constituency had its own requests, whether about Goodell’s relationship with Tom Brady, for whom the commissioner’s 2015 suspension for “Deflategate” was overruled, or what thoughts he had on Super Bowl LVI at the $5 billion SoFi Stadium in L.A., which opened last fall and where there hasn’t yet been a game with spectators.

“Tom Brady has shown himself to be probably the greatest player ever to play the game,” said Goodell about the 43-year-old quarterback who will start for Tampa Bay in his 10th Super Bowl game.

“His leadership, his ability to rise to the big occasion,” Goodell continued, “to make everybody around him rise ... and he’s one the great guys. I’ve known him for about 15 years. I think he’s going to continue to be a great player. I’m glad he’s going to play a few more years.”

Ben Volin of the Boston Globe — remember, for 20 years Brady was with New England — wanted to know whether Goodell punishing Brady back in 2015 was “the right thing to do.” That never was answered directly.

Goodell was more candid about Colin Kaepernick, who after leading the 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII in February 2013 was ostracized because a few years later he knelt during the National Anthem to protest racism.

Urged by then-President Donald Trump, team owners refused to sign Kaepernick as a free agent. In 2016 Goodell actively advised teams to bring in Kaepernick, but none did.

“We wished we had listened to our players two years ago,” said Goodell, which was as contrite as someone in his position could be.

“I said very clearly back in June (2020) that he deserves recognition. We started working with the players’ union and Black Lives Matter. He and other players brought the issues to us. We are now working with them.”

Too late to save Kaepernick’s career, but in time to help others. Goodell is nothing if not attentive.

Bucs’ Antonio Brown: From troubles to a place in the Super Bowl

By Art Spander

It’s all about production in sports.

There are exceptions, individuals or organizations with a genuine concern about civility and morality. Yet the issue rarely is what the athlete has done away from the field — his troubles in society — but what he is able to do on the field.

There was a wonderfully skilled receiver on the Oakland Raiders in the late 1960s, Warren Wells, who could catch anything. Unfortunately the law caught up with him, and he was arrested just before a huge game in Oakland.

For Raiders owner Al Davis — “Just win, baby” — the problem was less why Wells had been jailed than it was getting him back in the lineup for that Sunday.

It is ironic that receiver Antonio Brown, scheduled to play for Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV on Sunday, once was also with the Raiders, if very briefly, a few days in the summer of 2019.

Then he was with New England. Then he was suspended eight weeks for multiple violations of the NFL’s personal conduct policy (burglary and sexual misconduct).

Then in October 2020, partly on the recommendation of Tom Brady, who for a few days was a teammate on the Patriots, Brown was signed by the Buccaneers and now is to play in the most important game of the year.

Hey, it never hurts a quarterback to have another guy who can run routes. Besides, as you’ve heard before, everyone deserves a second chance. Or for Brown is it a third or fourth one?

Brown was great with the Steelers for several years. He was unable to reach an agreement for a new contract, and everything turned nasty, not the least of which was Brown’s disposition.

Which didn’t affect the way Brady judged him.

“Certainly I’m happy for Antonio to get an opportunity to resume his career,” Brady said in a Westwood One radio interview, Oct. 26, 2020, when Brown joined the quarterback on the Bucs. “He’s put a lot of time and energy into working on a lot of things in his life.”

Including the restraints placed on him by the NFL. Brown is on probation for two years, must undergo a psychological evaluation, provide 100 hours of community service and attend an anger management course.

In a Super Bowl interview session via Zoom on Wednesday, Brown was asked about the legal woes, which also included being sued for hurling furniture off a 14th-floor balcony and nearly striking a 22-month-old and grandfather walking below. His answer was really no answer at all.

“I’m just extremely grateful to be here,” said Brown, evoking memories of Marshawn Lynch (“I’m only here so I won’t get fined”) before Super Bowl XLIX in 2015.

Lynch was repetitive, offering the line repeatedly for five minutes. Brown was evasive.

“It’s a blessing to be here,” said Brown. “Super grateful. I’d be doing a disservice if I talked about things that are not the focus of the game.”

Sort of a variation on a theme by Brady’s former boss at New England, Bill Belichick, who following a rare loss talked only about the next game on the Patriots’ schedule. “On to Cincinnati,” was the memorable Belichick observation.

For Brown, it’s on to a world where the points on the scoreboard are almost all that matters, to him and those around him.

“I’ve been through some things, but that’s life,” Brown said. “We all have a story. We all have to allow ourselves to grow for the betterment of ourselves. I’m just grateful for the journey.

“I want my legacy to be a guy that was persistent, a guy that never gave up, no matter the odds, no matter the hate.”

Persistence counts. Production counts more. As we were reminded by the treatment of Warren Wells. And Antonio Brown.

Andy Reid: No Geritol or yelling, just wins

By Art Spander

Of course they’re older — with one exception, Sean McVay. The reason these guys are coaches is they have gained experience, in football or life. As you’ve heard, age is only a number, an insignificant one when compared to another number, wins.

How the conversation reached the point is hard to say, but apparently in his Tuesday presser, Zoomed for players and media separated by pandemic protocol, Kansas City’s Andy Reid was asked his age, an implication that he didn’t know how to deal with a new generation.

Reid is a mere 62 — the other coach in Sunday’s Super Bowl LV, Tampa Bay’s Bruce Arians, is 65 — and he joked that he and his staff are “no Geritol crew.”

If the reference is dated — Geritol was a mineral supplement pulled off the market maybe 30 years ago when the FDA denied the claim it cured “tired blood” — Reid is not dated.

As his 25-year-old quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, pointed out, Reid is young enough.

Reid also is part of the renowned Bill Walsh coaching tree, men who as assistants were fortunate enough to have a connection with the individual who perfected the West Coast Offense and, in turn, helped the 49ers win five Super Bowls.

Each became an NFL head coach, and now four, George Seifert, Jon Gruden, Mike Holmgren and last year Reid had their own Super Bowl victories.

West Coast (capitals) and for Seifert, Holmgren and Reid, California guys, west coast, lower case.

Reid grew up in Los Angeles, not far from Griffith Park. There was a fine story by Sam Farmer of the Los Angeles Times the other day of Reid, your typical offensive lineman, and his pals from Marshall High cramming into a VW bug and hitting the town — but not until they made their hits in prep games.

Reid moved on to Brigham Young, where in 1988, after six years as Niners quarterback coach, Holmgren had become the Cougars’ offensive coordinator. When Holmgren took over as head coach of the Green Bay Packers, he brought in his group.

The tree bloomed once more. According to the Kansas City Chiefs’ web site, in 1992 the Packers, under Holmgren, had five future NFL head coaches on the staff: Reid, Gruden, Steve Mariucci, Dick Jauron and Ray Rhodes.

They were sharp and aggressive, and intent on reaching the sky.

Just as years earlier, in the 1960s, were Walsh, Dick Vermeil and Jim Mora Sr., on staff at Stanford. They would stay after practice drawing plays on what then was a blackboard, trying to outfox each other. ”Last man with the chalk wins,” was the observation.

Which sounds very much like what you’d hear about Holmgren’s Packers assistants. “It was an exciting group of young talented coaches,” Gruden told the Chiefs web site.

“I love football and had a lot to prove. Andy (Reid) also had a lot of love for the game and a lot to prove, too. It was all so exciting being in the NFL at a young age, being with Mike Holmgren and a having a chance to show we belonged.”

As Walsh, Vermeil and Mora did some 40 years earlier, Reid and his colleagues challenged each other with concepts and plays, “intrasquad” stuff you might call it, ideas that in time would become functional.

“In our staff meetings,” said Holmgren, “you could throw out ideas on a table and if it was a good idea I’d stick it in the game plan. What I didn’t realize is they kept track of that. They’d go back and give a hard time to each other about that.”

It was all in the learning, the experience, as was the Philadelphia defeat when Reid was the Eagles’ head coach in the 2005 Super Bowl. A hard time? That’s all they ever give losers in Philly.

But he went to the Chiefs in 2013, and the Chiefs got their first Super Bowl win in a half century. He has the goods. He’s always had the perspective.

“We all want to be treated a certain way. If not, I know how I like to be treated,” he said. “That’s (what) tells me what I need to do to get better at what I’m trying to get accomplished. You don’t necessarily have to yell and scream at me to get me to do something better. I kind of go about it that way, going to treat people the way I want to be treated.

“We’re here as teachers, and that’s what I do. That’s how I look at myself is a teacher — of, in my case, men. Whether it’s on the field or off the field, if I can give them any experience to become better players, husbands, fathers, that’s what I do.”

He’s done it beautifully — and successfully.

As Goff learned, they love you — until they don’t

By Art Spander

This is the way it is in pro sports: They love you — until they don’t. And that’s management, the people in control. Sometimes the fans never love you. No matter what you accomplish.

The linking of Jared Goff and the Los Angeles Rams was perfect. Until, alas, it wasn’t.

He was born and raised in California; played quarterback at Cal so effectively the Los Angeles Rams made him the overall No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft; helped lead the Rams to the Super Bowl in his second season.

A golden boy from and in the Golden State.

Then, whup, traded to the Detroit Lions. For another quarterback, Matthew Stafford, also an overall No. 1 pick. Well, maybe “whup” isn’t quite accurate.

As of a few days ago when the Rams failed to offer anything more than unqualified support — “He is our quarterback right now” was the cryptic comment from L.A. coach Sean McVay after the Rams’ playoff loss two weeks ago — change was a possibility.

The hero has become a bum. The golden boy has been tarnished. At 26, Jared Goff was dispatched. Thanks for dropping by, and good luck on that team that never has any luck — real or Andrew Luck.    

He’s the Stanford quarterback also selected No. 1 overall, in 2012, who after injuries retired before the 2019 season. And is rumored to be coming back.

Those QBs are so valuable. You don’t win only with a quarterback. You need a defense, receivers, running backs, a kicker. But rarely do you win without a quarterback. He is the leader, the one who — as we’ve been taught — handles the ball on every play.

Norv Turner, who has coached several teams, including the Chargers, said during a season a great quarterback will win a couple of games that, without him, you would have lost.

Then again, if Stafford is the answer, the savior, someone the Rams preferred over the man they had, Goff, why didn’t the Detroit Lions ever win a playoff game in Stafford’s 12 seasons?

This is the start of Super Bowl week, and unquestionably the teams who made it, Tampa Bay and Kansas City, have brilliant quarterbacks, Patrick Mahomes of K.C. arguably the best now playing, and Tom Brady, arguably the best of all time.

Such a quest to find somebody of quality, if not another Mahomes or Brady. Or Joe Montana. Or John Elway. Or Terry Bradshaw. Someone to win those couple of games along the way you would have lost.

The 49ers have the guy who once was Brady’s backup at New England, Jimmy Garoppolo. He helped direct the Niners to the Super Bowl in 2019. As with Goff when the Rams got there, Garoppolo was on the team that didn’t win.

The 49ers are looking for someone else, according to the rumors. Stafford was one of their preferences. Now he’s joined one of their division opponents.

What happens to Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers, as Goff a Cal alum, who describes his future as a “beautiful mystery,” is, well, beautifully mysterious.

Everybody except K.C. and Tampa Bay (and of course the Rams and Lions) wants Houston’s Deshaun Watson, who wants out of Houston — but according to the Texans will remain.

So much instability. So much uncertainty.

A year and a half ago, the Rams signed Goff to a four-year $134 million contract extension. He was their quarterback. He’s now the Lions’ quarterback.

Goff incurred a broken thumb in the last game of the 2020 season. Yet it was broken trust by McVay and the Rams’ front office that cost the quarterback his job.

Along the way the decision was made, quoting that nefarious phrase bosses often employ, to go in a new direction.

How far the Rams — and Lions — will go after trading their franchise quarterback for a franchise quarterback should create as many questions as answers.

Where Brady goes, championships follow

By Art Spander

It isn’t only Tom Brady. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have an excellent defense — doesn’t every great team? — and fine receivers and running backs. But so much is Tom Brady. Where he goes, championships follow.

John Brodie, who quarterbacked the 49ers when Brady’s father, Tom Sr., came to be a fan, once told me you can’t blame an individual for failure in a team sport. You can, however, credit him for success.

Some people are winners. Some are not. Brady is a winner. Thus, so are the Tampa Bay Bucs, as was Brady’s former team, the New England Patriots, the one which for a varying set of reasons, Brady’s age, a need to rebuild, chose not to re-sign him after 20 seasons.

Which allowed the Bucs to do that, and in turn after a Sunday in Green Bay, when Brady threw three passes for touchdowns and numerous others to get control and keep it, underdog Tampa Bay defeated the Packers, 31- 26, for the NFC Championship.

For the 10th time, Brady will be playing in a Super Bowl, this one LV — 55 in the vulgate. And through fortune more than preparation, the game will be in Tampa, making the Bucs the first team in a half century to play the game at their home stadium.

He, or more correctly his team, the Patriots, has won six times previously.

Not bad for the kid from Serra High in San Mateo (from which Barry Bonds also graduated), who went to Michigan because no West Coast university was particularly interested and then wasn’t selected in the draft until the sixth round. Too slow was the judgment.

But Brady had an arm and a presence. He’s never had to run the 50, only run a football team.

This one season he ran the Bucs effectively, making us wonder what would have happened if he stayed with the Patriots, or gone to the team he cheered as a youth, the 49ers — who relied on Brady’s former backup in New England, Jimmy Garoppolo.

We’ll never know. What the Bucs know is, as they hoped, Brady provided the leadership and performance that made a difference in the locker room as much as on the field.

“I was excited when I saw on television that we signed him,” said Shaquil Barrett, the linebacker who on Sunday made others excited by combining with Jason Pierre-Paul for five sacks, speaking to Fox TV.

“You know what he can do. He treats everyone the same.”

Brady knows the drill. With all the attention over the years, all the accolades, he is almost too cool in interviews, offering a “been there, done that,” response — which you suppose is to be expected from someone who had his own weekly radio show in Boston and is married to a supermodel.

“It’s great to get another road win,” said Brady, “and now we got a home game.”

That will be in two weeks against the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and their own heroic (but younger) QB. At 25, Patrick Mahomes is 18 years younger than Brady and also is a Super Bowl MVP.

Quarterbacks are a necessity to win titles. Brady has understood this for years. Tom was wasn’t quite 5 when he was taken by his dad in January 1982 to “The Catch” game at Candlestick Park.

That’s the one where Joe Montana passed to Dwight Clark, lifting the 49ers to their first Super Bowl.

A long time, from virtual childhood to actual greatness. Brady perhaps never could have imagined he would return again and again to the Super Bowl, especially this season when so much changed.

Except his brilliance.

You still wonder what could have been for Aaron Rodgers

By Art Spander

It’s hard to watch Aaron Rodgers play as efficiently and successfully as he did in the NFL playoff game Saturday and not think what could have been. Indeed, what should have been.

Rodgers threw for 296 yards, and the Green Bay Packers beat the Los Angeles Rams, 32-18, to advance to next week’s NFC championship game, where they’ve been before. Four times before.

And when it comes to Rodgers, who has won a Super Bowl, we’ve also been there before.

He seems to be everywhere; in those State Farm Insurance commercials; usually in the field for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am (not this year, however — no amateurs) and in the opposition’s hair. Or end zone.

Where he isn’t is in a 49ers uniform. Even though he grew up in Chico hoping to be, and as an undergrad played for Cal, maybe 25 miles away from the Niners' facility.

An old story? Absolutely, but also an irritatingly unforgettable story.

The Niners had the No. 1 selection in the 2005 NFL draft. The presumption was they would choose Rodgers, who one Saturday against the previous No. 1 team in the land completed his first 23 passes, tying an NCAA record.

That wasn’t good enough for the new 49ers coach, Mike Nolan, who wanted someone more athletic and mobile than Rodgers. The pick was star-crossed Alex Smith of Utah, who now 15 years, several teams, many coaches and one serious injury later is with the Washington Football Team.

Nolan last was defensive coordinator for the Dallas Cowboys who, failing to qualify for to the postseason, fired him a week ago.

Nolan was hardly the only one not to put his faith and future in Rodgers. The quarterback remained untaken until the 24th pick by the Packers, whose QB at the time was Brett Favre.

“Quarterbacks need time to develop,” said Mike McCarthy, who in one of those all too typical sports mixtures was San Francisco's offensive coordinator when Nolan didn’t take Rodgers, became Rodgers' head coach with Green Bay and is now coaching the Dallas Cowboys, who just let Nolan go.

Rodgers has developed — into a star, a salesman and a celebrity. He’s 37, older than most NFL quarterbacks but younger than Tom Brady and Drew Brees, with whom he is ranked.

Asked about his performance Saturday, Rodgers was not quite as cool as he appears in the State Farm ads, like the one in which he launches a tee shot, wonders if the ball came down yet and then shrugs as it plops into the cup.

The victory Saturday at Lambeau Field in Green Bay (no frozen tundra on a 35-degree afternoon) set up Rodgers for his first home conference championship game. The other three, including last year’s loss at San Francisco, were on the road.

Unlike games in California during this Covid-19 crackdown, a few thousand fans were permitted to attend the win over the Rams.

“I’m definitely a little emotional, just thinking about what we’ve been through,” said Rodgers, who Saturday went 23 of 36. “It got me emotional with the crowd out there today.”

Rodgers threw a 1-yard touchdown pass to Davante Adams and a game-clinching 58-yarder to Allen Lazard with 6:52 remaining. Rodgers also had a 1-yard touchdown run, the first by a Packers quarterback in a playoff game at Lambeau since Bart Starr’s winning sneak in the Ice Bowl against Dallas on Dec. 31, 1967.

The Rams also had a Cal quarterback, Jared Goff, who was the first overall pick in the 2016 draft. He was in the Super Bowl his second season, but as of now he’s not Aaron Rodgers. His lone TV commercial is one of those ESPN promos.

For the Niners, a most unusual season

By Art Spander

So similar. And so different. The final game, and the 49ers had the lead going into the final quarter.

They couldn’t hold it a year ago in the Super Bowl, which was notably painful. Or on Sunday, in what ended a season that was as notably unusual, if only a trifle less painful.

A season with the loss of so many key players and, in a day or two, probably a key coach.

A season when a seemingly unstoppable virus, Covid-19, forced the Niners to abandon their training complex in Santa Clara, and forced the players and coaches to leave their homes and families.

A season that created as many questions — the essential one, who will be the starting quarterback in 2021? — as answers.

A season that, with a concluding 26-23 defeat by the Seattle Seahawks at State Farm Stadium near Phoenix, was both distressing, because it ended with a record of 6-10, and encouraging, because players said they gained new respect for teammates.

For the fans, the incidentals become, well, incidental. To them, it’s all about results, and if the Niners had to be transplanted, lock, stock and game plans, from Silicon Valley to the Valley of the Sun for more than a month, well, hey, it isn’t as if they were living in tents.

But sport, like so much in life, is a matter of routine. These weren’t college kids off for a fall break. They were grown men with wives and children and mortgages.

They knew there would be discipline. They knew there would be broken bones and twisted ankles. What they didn’t know until November was they would banned from practicing or playing where the Niners are headquartered — and forced to flee.

It would have been easier to say, this isn’t our year — which it wasn’t — yet in the final game, with a third-string quarterback (C.J. Beathard) with nothing at stake except pride, with thoughts that within minutes they’d be on a flight home, the Niners had a 16-6 lead in the fourth quarter over the playoff-bound Seahawks.

That should count for something, and it counted considerably with head coach Kyle Shanahan.

“I was real proud of the guys today,” Shanahan said. “I thought those guys competed their asses off in all aspects. I told them to hold their heads high. I didn’t think it was a moral victory or anything because I feel we should have won the game.” 

Almost certainly Shanahan and the Niners will lose coordinator Robert Saleh, who designed the defense that held the Seahawks to only two field goals through the first three quarters. “I hope everyone is not very smart and doesn’t hire him,” quipped Shanahan.

The coach wouldn’t offer a comment about the quarterback situation, although he has said as of now Jimmy Garoppolo would be back in charge. Garoppolo only made six games because of an injury. He was replaced by Nick Mullens, who then was hurt himself and replaced by Beathard.

There basically was no replacement for Nick Bosa, the 2019 defensive rookie of the year, who tore up a knee (ACL) in the Niners’ second game of the season. The same thing happened in the same game to another defensive line standout, Solomon Thomas.

Every subsequent game, there would be a graphic on TV showing how many different 49ers were out at one time or another, running backs, quarterbacks, defensive backs — you name them.

“I’m very happy,” said Shanahan, when asked if the end brought relief, if not a championship. “Very excited. It’s the first time I’ve packed two days in advance for anything … Being stuck in the hotel for over 30 days, it does wear on you a little bit. Not just me. The players. The cooks. The equipment guys. Everybody involved with us is ready to get back home.”

And, he pointed out, working for improvement.

“Once we were eliminated from the playoffs, we were ready to move on a little bit and get to next year. But we had to finish it.”

Before it finished them.

For the Rose Bowl, and Alabama, location is second to the result

By Art Spander

In the end, the location became less important than the result. Which despite traditionalists, and that includes me, is what counts.

To paraphrase Shakespeare about a certain flower, what’s in a game? If a pathway to another national championship for Alabama smells just as sweet, call it what you choose.

The red rose logo was on the turf at AT&T Stadium. The Crimson Tide seemed to be everywhere and Notre Dame virtually nowhere.

If one tradition was upturned, the Rose Bowl Game being held in Texas — and not even Pasadena, Texas — another remained: domination by Alabama, a 31-14 win over the Fighting Irish, in the event copyrighted as the “granddaddy of them all.”

Because of the Covid-19 surge in California and restrictions against spectators, for only the second time in its more than 100-year history the game had to be played somewhere other than the 92,000-seat stadium in Pasadena, Calif. 

Notre Dame might believe it shouldn’t have been played anywhere.

The Fighting Irish were down quickly. Alabama (12-0 and deservedly ranked No. 1) was ahead 14-0 with some four minutes to go in the first quarter.

And trying to ignore the critics from the media, most located someplace in Middle America, Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly agreed with the announcers who did the game for ESPN.

“They made plays on the perimeter,” said Kelly, an acknowledgment that Alabama had too much speed, particularly receiver DeVonta Smith, who caught three touchdown passes.

That’s as many as anyone ever has caught in a Rose Bowl. But just as whether a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear makes a sound, there could be a question from purists (guilty, your honor) whether a record not set in the Rose Bowl is really a Rose Bowl record.

The record for Notre Dame in Rose Bowl games, whether in southern California or north Texas, is now 1-1, the win coming over Stanford in the 1925 game.

The Notre Dame record for the year is 10-2, which would thrill the fans and alums of all but three other teams in the land but apparently displeases those who remember the glory days of the Golden Dome, and say as much — in print or on air.

Alabama has become what Notre Dame used to be. And that point rubs on Kelly. Or at least the comments in the media do.

The Fighting Irish are now 0-7 in either BCS or New Year’s six bowl games, going back to a rout by Oregon State (Oregon State?) in 2000.

Notre Dame has been outscored by 161 points in those games, with the closest loss by 14 points. So Kelly wasn’t happy with the postgame questioning.

“This wasn’t a matter of not getting knocked off the ball or not having enough players to compete against Alabama,” he said. “I’m sorry if you don’t like it and if the national media doesn’t like it, but we’re going to go back to work and we’re going to put ourselves back in this position again.

“We came up short with the firepower. There is not a wider story than with the firepower and making a few more plays.”

Alabama has the firepower and has been making plays for many seasons under head coach Nick Saban. He missed a few days during the schedule when he tested positive for Covid, but the Crimson Tide never missed a beat. 

What he did miss, however, was the place that gave the game its identity.

“I don’t think there’s anything quite like the Rose Bowl, the tradition, the setting, the mountains,” said Saban. “It’s just a phenomenal experience. I wish our players had gotten the opportunity.”

He’s not the only one. Hey, Rosie, it wasn’t the same on New Year’s Day without you.