OUR never-ending search for the catchy title phrase has hit a new low. But Martin Gramatica needs to give the kid a break. First start, facing Aaron Donald and a good defense, he didn't lose the game, and his teammates won it. Miami, as 49er fans found out already, is an improving team. Let's see what Tua can do over the rest of this year before we make any pronouncements-- and let's remember how many interceptions Peyton Manning threw in 1998. His team went 13-3 the next year.
2020, the year that just keeps on taking, saw George Kittle and Jimmy G execute limpoffs in yesterday's predictable-if-execrable loss at Seattle. A week after running the once-mighty Patriots off their own field, the 49ers reverted to "Miami mode," albeit against a team a lot more powerful than the Dolphins. 8-8 is beginning to look realistic, if not optimistic.
The team with the largest point differential in the NFC is... drumroll please... the Tampa Bay Bradys! If Tom wins a ring with Bruce Arians, will the "system quarterback" critics finally shut up? We may consider ourselves fortunate that the 49ers will not face the Buccaneers this season. Dallas and Washington-- six weeks away-- look like the only oases in the football Sahara ahead of us.
If the season ended today, Seattle, New Orleans, Green Bay, and Philadelphia would be the NFC division champions. Arizona, Tampa, and the Rams (by tiebreaker) would be the wild-cards, with the 5-3 Bears left out in the Chicago cold. In the AFC, it'd be the undefeated Steelers, defending champions KC, Buffalo, and Tennessee in the divisions, with Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Cleveland the wild-cards and the Raiders and Dolphins on the outside looking in. Of course, the bye weeks skew all this into trivial speculation at the moment.
Along with Fred Dean and the legendary Don Shula, pro football lost Herb Adderley, Jimmy Orr, and other greats this year. But baseball's list-- first Al Kaline, then the sudden sad trifecta of Bob Gibson, Joe Morgan, and Whitey Ford-- was an especially harsh reminder of the transience of this life and the mortality of us all.
We will have more to say about our memories of Fred Dean in a follow-up post that's been especially hard to put together.
And finally, please vote tomorrow. Vote for the President and his allies. Yes, he's an uncouth, boorish, "uncultured" man, a man who speaks before he thinks all too often, a man peculiarly and especially vulnerable to the traps of rampant egotism. He's also a man who set a cushy life of accomplishments aside to volunteer for a thankless job serving his country, and who has persevered through a campaign of personal hatred unseen since the time of Lincoln. His deeds tower over his reckless words like Kilimanjaro over the plain.
If you must support a Presidential candidate who looks and acts like your favorite cousin, then please vote for Jo Jorgensen (and you might also find she makes a lot of sense). But please shun the career hack who's sold himself out to the Chinese Communist Party, to the Deep State fixers, and to the radicals who expect to run rampant over and through any thought of a "Biden Administration." President Trump, the walking contradiction, the orange man of action, "is not the good guy America wants. He's the bad guy America needs. He's Batman!"
Well, not really. But he's the man nonetheless. Vote for the real America first. Thank you.
