Goodbye to the ‘What A Joke Era'

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In all corners of the 49ers locker room, the newest champions of the National Football Conference West Division were luxuriating in the end of the What A Joke Era of the franchise. They'd doused coach Jim Harbaugh in Gatorade. Frank Gore, Anthony Dixon and Ricky Jean-Francois waved gigantic flags at the crowd, and they'd passed out those cheesy hats players get when they've won something. They'd been, in Jim Harbaugh's cliche'd parlance, "mighty men" for the 10th time in 12 games, and they would get to play at least five more.

This, in short, was a big day at La Candeliere, The Ghost Stadium On The Bay. But it lasted only a moment, as the members of the secondary silently demonstrated.

All of them -- Carlos Rogers, Dashon Goldson, Tarell Brown and Donte Whitner -- watched with great intent as the Green Bay Packers flirted with and then cheated the reaper, beating the New York Giants, 38-35, on Mason Crosby's game-ending field goal. None of them said anything as the Packers were driving down the field in the last two minutes, because it occurred to them before anyone else that this moment had to be kept in a greater context.

This, while Jed York stood six feet away working the crowd of reporters (and in truth, comporting himself exactly like someone who has been there before rather than as the junior at Notre Dame the last time this occurred). This, while Gore and Alexander Douglas Smith and Aldon Jacarus Smith and Kyle Williams and Michael Crabtree and all the other "mighty men" of Sunday's 26-0 shutout of the St. Louis Rams. The members of the secondary watched silently as the team they continue to chase kept its distance. And when Crosby's 30-yard field goal neatly bifurcated the uprights, Whitner looked down from the screen suspended above their lockers, shook his head and walked into the night.

His body language was clear. This whipping up on the Rams was fun and all, but now the uphill work begins.

And that was the message to take into Monday. The joy of finally crushing eight years of rancid history, of mistakes piled atop misjudgments amidst heaps of misplaced arrogance and spectacular overreaching was done, and the more enjoyable yet harsher truths came back into focus, starting with this:

The 49ers have only cleaned off their rear-view mirrors. What lies ahead is what they're really after. The Packers. The Saints. The narrower, yet much wider world of football through the thin end of the funnel.

Right now, the 49ers are a fascinating dichotomy of good football in a gray setting. Of their 10 wins, only two have come against teams with winning records, and those two, Cincinnati and Detroit, are hitting the wall after strong starts. On the other hand, they are the first team since the 1923 Milwaukee Badgers to go 12 games without allowing a rushing touchdown, an extraordinary figure in any context.

(Those Badgers, by the way, finished 7-2-3, and finished third. And their two losses were to the Green Bay Packers. In short, there are more valuable metrics for the 49ers).

Back to the now, though. The 49ers, who were controlled by the iron hands of the Baltimore Ravens a week and change ago, rallied to crush one of the dishwater gray teams of their division with clear eyes and fully motivated hearts. They remained strangely impervious to the charms of the red zone, but A.D. Smith threw his longest and second-longest touchdown passes ever, to Crabtree and Williams. They lost Patrick Willis to a hamstring twang, severity as yet unannounced, but got 3XL games from linebackers NaVorro Bowman and A.J. Smith. They all handled their business the way professionals do when they want to stay professionals.

And even when they gave way to whimsy, like drenching Harbaugh and his pixie-dust sweatshirt with the bucket of life-giving iridescent elixir, or seizing the giant flags and waving them to the remains of the crowd in the south end zone to exult in the end of the bad old days, they kept clear on not the Christmas of the moment, but what comes after New Year's Day.

Or they talked as though they did. They have to play the Rams again on 1112, and by then the Rams will be thinking only of duck blinds, golf courses and other idle pursuits. In fact, the 49ers have to re-navigate the teams in The Division That Time Forgot, plus the surging Pittsburgh Steelers, and there are bye weeks and playoff matchups and standings positions to manipulate. There is the trigonometry of figuring out how to keep the engine revving while not standing so hard on the pedal. There is an entire uncharted world the 49ers now face between now and January 8, which would be the earliest playoff game they could play if things go bad, and January 16, which is the latest playoff game they could play if things go well.

In sum, this was a big day for the 49ers -- their first taste of honey after eight years of soot on old tube socks. They had every right to enjoy it. But if the idea is to do more than just merely get a seat in the upper deck, they must have already changed their world view from the three teams in their division to the two teams that should most concern them in the postseason. The two, or maybe three. There is much still to be dealt with, and there won't be another Gatorade bath or impromptu flag-waving for awhile.

That's how it works if you plan to act like you've been there before -- whether you have or not.

Ray Ratto is a columnist for CSNBayArea.com

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