San Francisco 49ers Hoping To Win Another Without Anyone Noticing

How do you make a whole football team disappear?

It's easier to do than you think, and it doesn't require the services of David Copperfield, Criss Angel, David Blaine, or even Penn Jillette.

First, you doom them with a 0-5 record, rendering them into complete irrelevance on the national stage.

Second, you give them an equally terrible opponent for Week 6—the kind of team that's been a league-wide running joke since, oh, 2003.

Third, you schedule the game on the same day that a playoff baseball game in a major media market is taking place. Does Giants at Phillies work for you?

Fourth, you make sure their game is absolutely worthy of the teams playing it—a rainy, sloppy, penalty-filled abomination of a first half, with nary a highlight to speak of, followed by a second half where one team picked up its play just enough to win because, well, someone had to.

And finally, the coup de grâce, the all-important fifth step: Figure out a way to have an obvious storyline running through several other higher profile games at once, the kind of controversy that's easy for the pundits to opine on, for the video people to make montages of, and for the lazy folks at Bristol to work themselves into a lather over.  

While your plucky 49ers were occupying themselves by being slightly less awful than the Raiders, the rest of the country was watching games involving interesting teams and exciting players. In three of those games, a big name player either concussed another big name player or got concussed due to a jarring helmet-to-helmet collision.

Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison gave Browns receivers Joshua Cribbs and Mohamed Massaquoi concussions on a pair of borderline cheap hits.

Patriots safety Brandon Meriweather laid out Ravens tight end Todd Heap twice, one of them an especially egregious blow where he launched himself upward at Heap's head well after the ball had bounced away from him.

The worst hit of all was to Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson, who got drilled by Falcons corner Dunta Robinson while attempting to haul in a pass on a shallow crossing route.

Five hellacious helmet-to-helmet hits in three games were enough to get the league's attention. Commissioner Roger Goodell announced that fines for violent hits would be substantially ratcheted up and that the league would start suspending offenders effective immediately.

None of last week's guilty parties wound up suspended, but Robinson and Meriweather were fined $50,000 each while Harrison was billed for $75,000. He was so incensed by the fine that he briefly contemplated retirement, sitting out a day of practice to clear his head.

Massaquoi and Cribbs are both still trying to clear theirs.

While no one in the Raiders-49ers game caught the league's attention, plenty of Niners had opinions on the new league directive.

"I saw (the hit to Jackson)," said receiver Josh Morgan. "I think that just comes with the game. I hope he'll be all right. But at the same time we're doing the same thing to them. We're trying to hit them when we're blocking for Frank (Gore)."

Does Morgan think the threat of big fines and suspensions will ease defenders up a bit? Will he feel safer out there now?

"I don't feel safer at all. You can say you're going to fine somebody, but they're still going hit you regardless, right? The defense is not going to show you any mercy. They're going to try to run through you, intimidate you and inflict pain on you. That's their job."

Fellow receiver Ted Ginn, who's of slighter frame than Morgan, didn't offer much empathy.

"When you're playing particular teams that are known for hitting, be ready," he said. "I just pray that all those guys that took a hit, like DeSean, Massaquoi, that they bounce back. But next time, keep your head on a swivel. That's all you can really say. It's going to happen."

More importantly, he expressed that the league should let the players police themselves, like they always have.

"It's going to happen. It's football. There's no way you can really protect a guy from getting hit like that. I don't really see the need to go and take somebody's money because you might have to come back and hit him one time and he's been bashing you all game."

And those were the comments from offensive players. A pair of defensive guys, the would-be future suspension earners and fine drawers, were predictably less vague about their feelings.

"I believe in protecting others by not doing anything cheap," declared all-world linebacker Patrick Willis. "That's, you know, a headlock, grabbing around a facemask, a straight top-of-the-head hit.  But when it comes to playing football… as a defensive player, it's hard to play now without worrying about the crazy stuff, you hit someone at the most critical time in a game and you get a flag for it."

Like Ginn, he thinks players can police their own, without league interference.

“Seventy-five thousand dollars for going out and hitting the guy? I thought that's what you're supposed to do, as a defensive guy you're supposed to hit and as an offensive guy you're supposed to avoid and if your quarterback leads you right where the defender is, then you should take that up with the quarterback."

What really bothered Willis though was the league's hypocrisy and double standard in punishing defensive players, but not offensive ones.

"It's one thing for us to go all out and try to tackle a guy and you hit him the wrong way. But, yet, on a screen play a guy can have you out on an open field and he knows, intentionally, that he's going to go down and cut your kneecaps and cut your legs out. And yet that's OK. It's just crazy. Somebody can cut your legs out like that, in an open field intentionally blow your knee out and you're done for the season. A concussion is what, two weeks? Maybe three? And yet they don't get fined for that or get in trouble for that."

Safety Dashon Goldson, who's probably the likeliest 49er to incur the league's wrath in the future thanks to this new mandate, found himself befuddled at the news.

"First they try to protect the quarterback, now they're protecting the receivers, so what are we left to do on defense?” he said. “Guys have to be careful, I understand what they're saying about health and all that, but we're football players, that's what we signed up for and (hard hits) are what the people want."

Goldson added that he'll keep playing the way he always has, as a human missile.

"I got to. I can't play with the rules in the back of my head (thinking) I can't hit the guy like that because it's hurting my team and I'm not getting the job done."

How do you fix the concussion epidemic?

I'm not sure that you can, under the current setup. Football players have been programmed to play a certain way all their lives. You can't magically change them once they get to the pros.

The time to teach kids how to tackle properly is at the Pop Warner and middle school levels. If a kid isn't doing it the right way, a coach has to pull him off the field, even if he is the biggest and fastest little bugger out there.

Maybe the solution is to widen the field. The players keep getting larger and faster and stronger, but the dimensions have stayed the same for 70 years. Perhaps giving them more room to operate would lessen the number of collisions.

Then there's the helmets. The league is always tinkering with them, trying to make them safer, but nothing seems to be working. Are those oversized "Gazoo" helmets, like the one New York Met David Wright wore last year after suffering a concussion, the answer?

Or maybe not wearing a helmet at all? Some think that the only way to get players to stop spearing one another is to take away their spear.    

Good luck with that one.

The league is desperately hoping these fines will get the players' attention and that they can get through a couple of relatively "clean" weeks free of head injuries. They're hoping guys will just suffer the run-of-the-mill separated shoulders and ACL tears while the public at large shrugs and adjusts their fantasy rosters.

All we know for sure is that there's only two ways that 1-5 San Francisco at 0-5 Carolina (Matt Moore back at quarterback, Steve Smith is back after missing a game with a sprained ankle) will get more than 30 seconds on SportsCenter.

One is if Goldson or perhaps Panthers linebacker Jon Beason decapitates somebody.

The other is if Mike Singletary goes all Mike Singletary on poor Alex Smith again.

Hopefully it will be another anonymous afternoon for the guys in red and gold.

The Pick: 49ers 20, Panthers 13 (Record 1-5)