Peon's Place

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees was having a record breaking year and was looking poised to go for a deep playoff run. But the San Francisco 49ers have been revived by head coach Jim Harbaugh and are back at the top of the league with a trip to the NFC Championship for the first time since Steve Young was QB.

With the 49ers holding a small lead at the top of the 4th quarter, the game turned into a gunslingers’ duel as Brees and 49ers QB Alex Smith changed leads throughout the end of the 4th quarter. With 9 seconds left Smith threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to tightend Vernon Davis to give the 49ers a 36-32 win. Davis was crying uncontrollably as the 49ers go from laughingstock to league leader in just one season.

I’m happy that my #1 favorite 49ers beat my #3 favorite Saints, even though I didn’t believe there was a solid chance for it to happen. Best of all, Sunday brought around the fall of my #2 favorite Green Bay Packers, which means the 49ers have a much better chance to get to the Super Bowl. They learned along with the rest of us that instead of getting the team’s road gear ready for the frozen tundra of Lambeau, they can stay settled here at home and face the New York Giants.

Bay Area, are you ready FOR SOME FOOTBALL?!?

Tickets for this weekend go on sale Wednesday through Ticketmaster.

So after a couple of power failures and cringing every time Ben Roethlisberger thought he could play football, the question begs to be asked…

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Interceptions were made by Dashon Goldson, Carlos Rogers, and Tarell Brown. Ray McDonald also forced a fumble on a Big Ben sack, which speaking of sacks, Aldon Smith had 2.5 of them, giving him a total of 13 sacks for the year, a 49er rookie record. Pro Bowl? Definitely. Best rookie of the year? You’re damn right.  Read the rest of this entry » 49ers play Lights OUT foo...

Chew on this: The San Francisco 49ers are second place in the entire NFL (5-1), behind only my Green Bay Packers (6-0), and even ahead of my New Orleans Saints (4-2) after their loss this weekend.

After walking into Ford Field in Detroit, and doing what the Chicago Bears could not, the 49ers are now no longer under the radar in the NFL. They are the threat that no one took seriously for the past month, and the team that the bay area has been looking to re-find for the past decade.

I was watching the game yesterday and couldn’t help but cringe at the offside calls, due to the loud crowd noise and dangerous defensive linemen that the Lions employ. I saw why Jay Cutler was sacked so many times, but the offensive linemen for the 49ers got it done in the end. They held the quarterback sack and hit counts to a minimum, and opened up holes for Frank Gore (15 carries, 141 yards, 1 touchdown – his best game of the year and second straight 100+ yard week).  Read the rest of this entry » The 49ers are the only on...

The San Francisco 49ers are sitting atop the NFC West with a 4-1 record and are heading to Detroit to take on the 5-0 Lions. It’s a wholly exciting game on paper, much more so than most of us would have figured just a few short months ago. I was hoping the Bears would win, despite how much I hated the idea of Chicago taking a victory, but any way to keep the Green Bay Packers at the #1 spot I’m okay with.

The 49ers find themselves in a pretty good situation. Despite a win by the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday, they remain in a great place atop the NFC West division, two games above the next competition, sporting a 4-1 record; the lone blemish being an overtime loss to the Dallas Cowboys on a blown play. They’re coming off a dominating win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and a good win that just might have sucked the rest of the life out of Michael Vick and the Philadelphia Eagles, overcoming a 20+ point differential to win in impressive fashion.

The Buccaneers had been 3-1 coming into the game at Candlestick Park, and the 49ers executed on all levels. They stopped LeGarrete Blount, they made Josh Freeman look terrible, and they dealt with the Tampa Bay defense like no team has this season. That’s an awfully good Buccaneers team, and a great win, especially by such a margin. Now, they’re hitting the road before a bye week, to take on the Detroit Lions.  Read the rest of this entry » Can the 49ers tear into t...

So, you think you can ball? If not for two kick/punt returns by Ted Ginn, the 49ers may not have won last week against the Seahawks. Dallas is coming to town, and San Francisco will need to step up their game. The Cowboys barely lost a game to the New York Jets last week, and they’re looking to even their 2011 record.

For the 18th time in franchise history, the 49ers can be 2-0 to start the season. And that huge rivalry with the Cowboys? The 49ers are winning it, 16-15-1. Woah. This means the Dallas Cowboys can tie the franchise series between the two teams, on Sunday. The teams last played in 2008, with Dallas winning 35-22.

How are the 49ers going to stop Tony Romo, DeMarcus Ware, and the rest of the blue & white?  Read the rest of this entry » 49ers vs Cowboys – ...

In what I believe a rather surprising call, especially this late (after the preseason, less than a week before the regular season), the Jaguars have cut their starting quarterback, David Garrard. He has led the Jags to a 39-37 record in his career, and that’s with a division boasting Peyton Manning and Matt Schaub.

The NFL season starts in two days, which means this hardly seems a well thought-out decision and does not say much about the organization and its respect for a veteran player that has started 76 games since 2002, won the only playoff game in franchise history and has a 39-37 win-loss record.  But hey, Jacksonville need to sell tickets, right? Read the rest of this entry » Two days before the seaso...

Us San Francisco 49er fans who watched veteran quarterback Alex Smith pretty much barf all over himself against the New Orleans Saints in the team’s preseason opener should not have been surprised. After all, Smith has been teetering between mediocrity and abject horribleness since he was taken first overall out of Utah in the 2005 NFL draft. The man who was selected 24^th by the Green Bay Packers in that same draft, Cal’s Aaron Rodgers, has had a slightly better go of it to date.

After three years sitting behind Brett Favre, Rodgers finally got his shot, helped the Packers win Super Bowl XLV, and has become one of the best at his position in the league. However, in the upcoming “America’s Game” documentary about the current Super Bowl champions, Rodgers (who is one of three  interviewed for the hour-long documentary, along with cornerback Charles Woodson and head coach Mike McCarthy) talked about the team he really wanted to play for when he was growing up in northern California and going to school in Oregon, and going to college at Cal (Berkley): The San Francisco 49ers.  Read the rest of this entry » That knife just keeps tur...

So the NFL Pre-season has officially started as of this past weekend, and I’ve done 2 of my 4 fantasy football drafts for this season already. I know many more drafts are to come, and for those of you who want the perspective of someone who has won many leagues in the past few years that I have been playing, I’ll dispense my knowledge and advice on a top-5 basis.

First up on the “do not draft list” is the duo of quarterbacks who were swapped back in 2009. Jay Cutler, and Kyle Orton.  Read the rest of this entry » Top 5 Fantasy Football QB...

So it’s not Josh Johnson that the 49ers will be bringing into camp to possibly be the rotating 3rd QB this year — it’s 34-year old veteran Daunte Culpepper. Jim Harbaugh confirmed yesterday that they will be trying out Culpepper today, after he spent the last year playing in the UFL.

After 18 blitzes this past weekend from the Saints to Alex Smith, Coach Harbaugh was forced to make the decision of someone who isn’t going to over react to a back situation coming at him, time and time again. While Culpepper hasn’t done much in the NFL in the past few year and the past few teams, and while he may not have anything left in the tank, he may still have more than what the 49ers do.

Neither of Alex Smith’s backups — Colin Kaepernick, a second-round draft pick out of Nevada, and Jeremiah Masoli, who was undrafted out of Mississippi, have experience with this sort of pressure in the NFL. Perhaps this is a change that they need, even if Daunte doesn’t end up taking a snap this season.

I honestly don’t blame the horrible quarterback play of Alex Smith for the decimation of the first 49ers preseason game against the Saints this past weekend. I blame that first-round-pick offensive line. I couldn’t help but hold my hand over my eyes as I watched the game. How many sacks? Six? Ouch.

Can we blame the NFL lockout for lack of practice these guys have together? I am not sure, but after the 24-3 preseason-opening loss to the Saints, it’s safe to say all eyes will be on San Francisco’s front five when it returns to Candlestick to host the Raiders on Saturday. Center Adam Snyder conceded the obvious after the line allowed six sacks against the Saints’ relentless blitzing: Such a performance could not be repeated. ”There’s no excuse for it,” Snyder said. “We just have to get better. A lot of it just comes down to us executing our job.” Snyder said the game left a “bitter taste in his mouth,” and it probably left a few bruises on the back of quarterback Alex Smith, who took two vicious blindside hits during San Francisco’s first five offensive plays.  Read the rest of this entry » The Saints were Sacktasti...