Resurgent San Francisco 49ers Have Fans Walking on Air

Their walk is a wry smile, a bit eerie, cocky, cheerful, bordering on arrogant. Look closely and you will see a couple of inches between the soles of their shoes and the ground.

San Francisco 49ers fans are walking on air.

Pundits will make much of the personalities of the 49ers. They’ll list statistics and pontificate on strategies and tactics. They’ll talk a lot about plays, make predictions, assert opinions and point out little-known facts about the people on the team.

They will mention an ownership that provides both leadership and support in the proper proportions. They will compliment the draft and free agency acquisitions. They’ll rave about the coaching staff and use words like ‘genius.’ They’ll mention one or another of the players or entire squads and marvel at ‘balance’ and ‘commitment.’ They will compare this team to past teams.

The past decade has been a long, dry season of disappointment. Let the pundits have their fun; they need the release. And you need the good reading.

If you are a true fan, none of that really matters.

The 49ers are back, baby.

Playoff games are back.

The tight throw into traffic to win a game with nine seconds left on the game clock is back. The comeback win is back. The defense that causes worthy opponents to turn the ball over is back. The hard hit to intimidate the receiver, the quarterback or the running back is back. The long throw that makes forty yards when the game is on the line is back. The respect of the entire team by the rest of the NFL is back. The confidence that this team can pull it out is back.

Alex Smith has a distance between the soles of his feet and the ground, also. He shed 2,000 pounds in the last four minutes of the playoff game against the Saints on Saturday. His back had bent carrying a full ton of criticism, belittling, questioning, aspersions, proposals for trading him, attributions of lack of talent and attacks on his personality.

It all slipped off his back in a short, four-minute span that ended the fourth quarter of one of the finest football games ever played in the NFL. Alex Smith has gone from goat to hero; travelled from ‘almost was’ to a worthy successor of the great 49ers quarterbacks. Alex Smith, like Steve Young before him, has gotten the monkey—and the target—off his back.

The 49ers' squad, in one short season, has gone from league-wide joke to NFL prominence. It does not really matter what happens in the next few weeks. If the 49ers win the game with the Giants and then win the Super Bowl everyone will cheer, no one more than me. In fact, I already have my fingers and toes, legs and arms and even my eyes crossed in hopes my contortions will somehow speed them to victory.

But, even if they do not win, fans are confident and happy with their team and can accept failure now because they know it will be rare.

Even if the 49ers stumble on these last steps the fans walking on air know something for certain:

The 49ers are back, baby.