The San Francisco Giants ended their season with a record of 88-74. Only four teams in the entire National League had better records. Unfortunately for them, two of those teams were in their Western Division, so they missed the playoffs. But in a year when I frankly didn’t expect them to do much better than .500, that’s a pretty terrific season.
Meanwhile the San Francisco 49ers are 3-1 after a 35-0 shellacking of the winless St. Louis Rams. They could and probably should be 4-0 but for some inept late-game decision making in Week 3. But I’m still holding back from getting too excited about them. Three of their wins have come in their undeniably weak division and today’s W wasn’t really much of a test. But it’s worth noting from the big victory today that:
- The defense came into its own, not only shutting down the Rams and Steven Jackson (who was held to 79 yards on the ground and one catch for six yards), but scoring 14 of the points.
- Special teams accounted for another seven, which is great but it means the Niners offense, against a pretty pathetic Rams D, managed only 14 points. That’s not encouraging. Shaun Hill was better than his stats (14/24 for 152 yards) indicated; he had at least three dropped passes that clearly should have been caught, one of them for an easy six.
- Playing without the backbone of the offense as Frank Gore continues to nurse his injury, Glen Coffee picked up 74 rushing yards, which is below fans’ expectations for him but he shows steady improvement.
- The team attitude was really upbeat despite coming off an ugly and unnecessary loss at Minnesota last week. Coach Mike Singletary obviously has these guys thinking differently.
Next week’s test is a little stronger as the Niners host the 2-1 Falcons who are coming off a bye week.
Posted via email from danshafer’s posterous
