Michael Crabtree: Will One Sour Crabapple Ruin the Whole 49ers Bunch?

Though the decision makers over at the 49ers personnel department would never admit it, not even if you injected them with sodium pentathol or subjected them to parrilla by way of their individual nipples, you get the feeling in Santa Clara that when all is said and done, head coach Mike Singletary and everyone else in that building would have just as soon preferred for the Cleveland Browns or the Oakland Raiders to have taken Michael Crabtree in last year's draft like they were supposed to.

No offense to rookie tackle Anthony Davis, who's a swell young man and has shown considerable potential during training camp, but if things had gone according to script he wouldn't be a 49er right now, but instead a Packer. Brian Bulaga would in turn be a Cowboy and so on and so forth.

Believe it or not, neither Singletary or former general manager Scot McCloughan were delusional enough to really think Adam Snyder was the future at right tackle. They're crazy and all, but they're not nuts. No, the plan going into the draft was to pick Michael Oher, the protagonist of Michael Lewis' fabulous book The Blind Side that eventually got turned into a mediocre (at best) Sandra Bullock movie in which she somehow won an Academy Award for best actress.

I didn't find Bullock's portrayal of Oher at all convincing, but I digress.

The point is Oher was supposed to be the guy to shore up the offensive line. Imagine how different life would be if they drafted him instead.

No contract holdout as a rookie.

No PR nightmares with a petulant, entitled young receiver who is a card-carrying member of the Isaac Bruce school of media relations.

No turnstile at right tackle last year.

In all likelihood the 49ers would've made the playoffs last season, as 16 games worth of Oher would've been far more valuable than 11 with Crabtree.

Going into the 2009 draft the Browns liked Crabtree the player, but were so turned off by Crabtree the person during his visit that they passed. It's hard to imagine the Raiders passing on anyone because of a bad attitude - heck it's just hard to imagine the Raiders passing period - but Crabtree wasn't fast enough to suit Al Davis' taste, so they went with Darius Heyward-Bey instead. Of course they did.

Lo and behold that left Crabtree for the Niners at the tenth slot. They didn't want to pick him, they never really imagined having the opportunity, but he was so far and away the best talent available, they had to bite the bullet.

And now Crab's biting them back, right in their collective rear ends.

From day one, the local reporters knew this kid was going to be a handful. During Crabtree's introductory interview with the beat guys, he mentioned his passion for clothes and his plans of starting his own clothing line. A local scribe asked him if the clothes would be affordable for workaday Joes, or of for upscale retailers.

Crabtree shot the reporter such a disdainful look, a glare that screamed, "How dare you even ask that?" before spitting back, "High end."

Instantly, it was obvious that this wasn't going to be a regular "Aw shucks" rookie.  

The contract impasse that followed was as predictable as it was boorish, and even though Crabtree was never a sympathetic figure, it was at least possible to see his side of the story. He wanted to be paid like a top-five pick because he was a top-five talent. The 49ers perfectly logical rebuttal - it's not our fault the other nine teams passed on you, bub - eventually won out.

The team portrayed Crabtree as someone who was never going to love the spotlight, but a quiet guy who loved football. The rookie wideout swore that it killed him to miss training camp and first few regular season games, but that business was business.

Or maybe he just swore, seeing us approaching his locker. It's hard to remember everything from a year ago.

Either way, after a successful (albeit truncated) rookie season, things were supposed to be different for Crabtree in year two. There wasn't supposed to be any distractions or drama this time, but instead a gifted youngster finally earning his stripes by excelling through training camp.

Which he did, for about a week. Then he missed a couple of days of practice as a "veteran courtesy" which seemed odd, considering he was a veteran all of 11 games. A team staffer said the receiver was dealing with a sore neck. He returned to the next practice, an afternoon session in front of the fans, and landed on his back after leaping to catch a wayward pass from Alex Smith.

The injury didn't appear serious, but he missed the opening preseason game, at Indianapolis, as an understandable precaution. Then the following week of practice, which culminated in the game against the Vikings. A bit strange for a guy with a sore neck, but whatever.

Around this time Smith hinted to reporters that he was getting peeved with his teammate. He explained that while Crabtree understood how to play from the "X" spot, he's wasn't nearly as versed about all of his routes and responsibilities from the slot, where the team plans to use him a lot in three receiver packages.

Midway through the following week Crabtree finally returned to full practice. There was no way he'd miss the third preseason game, the one that's a dress rehearsal for the starters, right? Wrong. He complained that his neck felt stiff during warm-ups and begged out. That made it oh-for-seven in career preseason games, if you're counting at home.

The day before he made it oh-for-eight, tight end Vernon Davis finally snapped and chastised Crabtree, animatedly gesturing at him and cussing up a storm. The team was just going through a walk-through practice as it was, but somehow Crabtree was acting even more lackadaisically than the rest of the them. A CSN Bay Area camera caught him nibbling on sunflower seeds during the middle of the practice, moments before Davis said something to him.

The two had to be separated by Singletary, who then escorted them to the sanctity of the locker room to continue the discussion for another 15 minutes. Afterward the coach said he appreciated the intentions of Davis, one of his captains, but not his execution, and that "the elephant is no longer in the room, the elephant was exposed."

It didn't take a genius to figure that the Dumbo he was referring to was Crabtree.

For a guy who supposedly loves football, Crabtree has never demonstrated much enthusiasm for practice and even less for the exhibition season. While his holdout as a rookie may have well indeed been about business, it seems apparent now that the receiver never felt a pressing need to be at camp, so there never was any urgency from his side to get a deal done quickly.

It was an available excuse, so he took it. The deal he wound up signing wasn't much different than the one the team offered him months before. He missed the meat of this training camp with the sore neck. Maybe next year he'd have a lockout to keep him away, or perhaps he'll claim that he "outperformed his contract," or some such nonsense.

What's cannot be argued is that Crabtree sees himself as something other. He doesn't believe the rules apply to him. He doesn't prescribe to our version of reality. When reporters asked him about a couple of drops he had during a game last season, he flat out denied that it happened, as if the drops were a figment of our imagination.

It's not unusual for superstars to be difficult, but most of them have the courtesy to become superstars first. By all accounts Terrell Owens was an absolute peach his first few years. Who's the last guy you can remember who acted this way before he actually did anything? A scrawny Barry Bonds during the late 80's with the Pirates, perhaps.

It's too soon to call Crabtree a cancer, but he's definitely a growth that merits a checkup. He's going to go into his second season not quite as unprepared as he was for the past one, but not nearly as primed as he could've been. Will it hurt the team? Time will tell.

In Baltimore, Oher has been diligently preparing to start his first season protecting Joe Flacco's blind side after his successful apprenticeship at right tackle in 2009. There hasn't been a hint of drama with him in two years.

What could've been.