San Francisco Football

Posted by Cindy on August 5, 2009

Is anyone really buying what the San Francisco Forty Niners are selling? As we prepare to enter the 2009 pre-season, many fans are hopeful that wide receiver, Michael Crabtree, the yet to be signed, first round draft pick will be the next Terrell Owens or Jerry Rice. Assuming the former Texas Tech star receiver bounces back from the stress fracture injury in his right foot, and that he lives up to all the projections as to his caliber of play at the professional level, we still don’t know who will be throwing the ball to him. The Niners are approaching their fifth consecutive year of inserting a new Offensive Coordinator and their third consecutive year with a starting quarterback controversy. By all accounts, the job should be Shaun Hill’s to lose, since he is the only Forty Niner quarterback with a winning record since Jeff Garcia left in 2003. It was widely considered that former overall number one draft pick, Alex Smith would never be seen in a Forty Niner uniform again following his season ending shoulder injury. Compound this equation with the news that this injury was believed by the Forty Niner medical staff to have been caused by a wire left from Smith’s previous shoulder surgery, one has to wonder why they kept Smith on the team.

Among all of these unknown factors on the offensive side of the ball, the York family is still selling smash mouth football behind its new head coach, Mike Singletary. Singletary began his head-coaching career when he took over for Mike Nolan in the middle of last season with such acts as dropping his pants in the locker room and running Tight End, Vernon Davis off the field in efforts to make an impression of toughness on his players. This year the Hall of Fame linebacker is demanding full contact practices and tackling drills during the first fifteen days of camp. If the players survive camp without injury, they might have a shot at their first winning season in seven years, but it’s not a great bet with so many questions surrounding their offense and a returning inconsistent defensive unit. Unfortunately, it’s not a great time to be a professional football fan in the Bay Area given the Raiders have posted no more than five wins in any season over the same stretch of time. Therefore, if you have the budget to purchase tickets for sports in the Bay Area this fall, you might consider looking at Cal or Stanford football.