(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The 49ers expected to beat the Rams last Sunday, but more importantly, they took it a step further, they HAD to beat the Rams. Otherwise, they would have been at risk of having their season completely unravel, just as their confidence was at its most vulnerable, after the “Favre breaker” a week earlier.
The Rams game this past Sunday was one of the most astonishing games the 49ers have played in quite some time.
Last year, under Mike Nolan, one would have expected this game to end up 10-7 or so, perhaps with an overtime finish.
But there was something different this time.
This time the 49ers were riding a wave.
They manifested a blowout, forged from pure belief. Belief that existed on BOTH sides of the ball.
Manifest destiny
After an entire first half of offensive ineptitude, the 49ers came out in the second half as if they had only thrown an incomplete pass, and that this error was to be quickly corrected.
A microcosm of this, occurred after Shaun Hill through a beautifully placed long pass right into Josh Morgan's hands at the start of the third quarter.
Morgan dropped the perfectly thrown pass. But again, it was as if this was just another temporary hiccup, because after that play, the tidal wave of belief in the entire stadium, on both sides of the ball, hit; it hit really hard...
Not long after the dropped pass, St. Louis had the ball deep in their own territory.
Kyle Boller stepped back into a well protected pocket. That was the reality; but the BELIEF was different. The perception in Boller's mind, in that spooky, creepy, loud stadium, was that there must be someone emerging from the shadows, about to grab him for the sack.
Running from ghosts, Boller rolled to his right. At this point of course, there truly was pressure put on him, because he had just stepped out of a well protected safe zone into a defenders charge.
Panicked, like Ichabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow, he committed a cardinal sin of quarterbacking. He threw the ball across the field without vision of the middle of the field.
Patrick Willis, to his credit, read Ichabod's eyes and galloped up in front of the throw, and took it to the end zone like a headless horseman holding a flaming pumpkin.
It was then the stadium came alive, and the 49ers offense was now finally able to operate, throwing two touchdown passes as if it was something they expected to do all along.
The sheer willpower in that stadium, made it happen.
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