Bly Shouldn't Be the Only One Apologizing For 49ers Sorry Performance

It's Monday and everyone has a case of the "sorry"s.

I'm not so sure who had a worse weekend, the San Francisco 49ers players for putting on such a miserable performance in losing 45-10 to the Atlanta Falcons at home or 49ers-should-have-little-difficulty-in-grounding-the-falcons">me for for predicting a ho-hum win for them, but personally I think I suffered a heck of a lot more than they did.

All they had to was play that game. I was the sucker who had to watch it.

The Falcons were a lot better than I thought they were, especially offensively, where they looked darn near perfect in racking up 477 yards against a thoroughly whipped San Francisco defense.

They ran it when they wanted to, passed it to whomever they felt like, and their offensive line had no problems in keeping quarterback Matt Ryan clean, no matter how many blitzers the 49ers sent.

Ryan came into the game as someone with a reputation of being better when blitzed as opposed to being presented conventional defenses and zone coverages, and while he was sharp against pressure on Sunday, he had no problems in picking apart the 49ers secondary regardless of the looks they gave him.

The Falcons certainly were undaunted about matching up receiver Roddy White against highly touted Niners corner Nate Clements, and White abused the smaller Clements early and often on his way eight catches, a franchise-record 210 receiving yards, and two touchdowns, the second of which effectively iced the game for Atlanta.

The dirty birds were able to sprint to a quick 14-0 lead thanks in part to a fortunate interception, where linebacker Mike Peterson deflected 49ers quarterback Shaun Hill's pass into the hands of nickelback Brian Williams, giving the team a short field to work with.

They were in the end zone four plays and 21 yards later, and following a San Francisco three-and-out, marched right down the field again. 49ers coach Mike Singletary tried to rally the troops with a time out, and the players thought so highly of his speech that they allowed Ryan to find a wide open White for a 31-yard touchdown on the very next play.

Not having that time out would prove very costly later in the half.

San Francisco did rally with back-to-back scoring drives, highlighted by a 61-yard catch-and-run from receiver Josh Morgan on a third down pass from Hill, and following a fumble by Falcon scatback Jerious Norwood, the 49ers had the ball down 14-10 and looked to have all the momentum on their side.

It's remarkable to think that just eleven plays later, the game was over.

First the 49ers offense sputtered through another three-and-out, and a third down sack of Hill—right tackle Tony Pashos was the guilty party there—took the team out of field goal range.

Andy Lee had a great punt though, and the defense looked in good shape with the Falcons pinned at their own four.

On third-and-four Ryan floated a pass on the left side toward White and here a beaten Clements took a needless gamble. Instead of understanding he was out of position and giving up a six yard completion—albeit with a new set of downs—he made a desperate leap in the futile hope of deflecting the pass.

White got up higher, made the catch, shook off Clements and rambled 90 yards down the field. He had nobody to get in his way because free safety Dashon Goldson was blitzing on the play, another reason it was foolish of Clements to take the chance he did.

San Francisco was suddenly down 21-10 and it was about to get worse.

Returner Delanie Walker got flipped and put the ball on the turf when he landed on the ensuing kickoff. Though it looked like the ground caused the fumble, the refs didn't see it that way and awarded possession to the Falcons.

Singletary wasted the team's first time out and Hill burned through the other two during the scoring drives, so the team had none left to challenge the call.

Atlanta got the ball on San Francisco's 38-yard line and needed all of three Michael Turner runs to make it 28-10 and just like that a close game turned into a flood, as in fans flooding out of the stadium.

The ones who stayed got to enjoy a real treat.

After cornerback Dre' Bly intercepted Ryan in third quarter—down 35-10 at the time—he decided to prematurely celebrate, and as he high-stepped down the field he was holding the ball like a loaf of bread.

Apparently White was hungry for a sandwich (he must have worked up quite an appetite ravaging the 49ers secondary), so he caught up to the showboating Bly and forced a fumble, which Atlanta recovered.

The sequence didn't have any bearing on the game, but boy did it play poorly on the highlight reel. Bly didn't help himself at all with his defiant comments afterward either, though to his credit he did apologize to everyone on Monday.

Who would've thought that one week after recording their first shutout since 2002 and their most decisive win since 2003, that the 49ers would endure their most one-sided defeat since a 41-0 howler at Kansas City in October of 2006 and their worst loss at Candlestick Park, ever?

They lost 45-3 to the Detroit Lions in 1967 at old Kezar Stadium, but nothing this bad at the "new" place, which is saying something because the 49ers have fielded some absolutely wretched teams both pre-Bill Walsh and pre-Singletary.

That they stunk out the joint on offense without star running back Frank Gore wasn't too surprising—Singletary made it clear that changes were coming for his offensive line— but the way the defense collapsed has to be cause for alarm.

Suddenly the preseason fears reared their ugly head. The pass rush was non-existent, even with the persistent blitzing. Nobody could cover Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez. The safeties often looked slow (Michael Lewis) and out of position (Goldson).

The run defense deserves a mulligan. Having to take on three bruising monsters in a row in Minnesota's Adrian Peterson, St. Louis' Steven Jackson and then Atlanta's Turner is a lot to ask of any unit.

It didn't help those guys any that they weren't getting much opportunity to rest as their offensive counterparts weren't exactly putting many long drives together.

Until a meaningless drive late in the fourth quarter when the game was long decided, the longest the 49ers held onto the ball on a drive was three minutes, forty-six seconds.

The team has major work to do during its bye week, far more substantial than simply "integrating Michael Crabtree into the offense."

Into what offense? The rest of the players who have been with the program these past 80 days haven't been able to make it look any good.

All in all, it should be an interesting two weeks in Santa Clara.