Baltimore 34, San Francisco 31
Game Balls
Joe Flacco, QB, Baltimore Ravens. 22 of 33 for 287 yards and 3 touchdowns.
Jacoby Jones, WR/KR, Baltimore Ravens. 1 catch for 56 yards and 1 touchdown. 2 punt returns for 28 yards. 5 kickoff returns for 206 yards and 1 touchdown.
There’s nothing I can write about Joe Flacco that hasn’t already been written.
I was originally prepared to give the second game ball to Anquan Boldin since Jones didn’t affect the outcome of the game at all outside of two plays, but since the second game ball should theoretically either go to a player from the losing team in a close matchup or a member of one of the winning team’s other units (in this case, the first game ball goes to an offensive player, so the second should ostensibly go to a defense or special teams player) and one of Jones’s big plays was a kickoff return, there you go.
I could do a detailed postmortem of this game, as there are plenty of really lazy narratives out there being talked about over and over by the media, as there always are. Bill Barnwell of Grantland.com did a much better job of doing that than I could possibly hope to do, so I’m not going to attempt it. I’m just going to recommend you read his article as he continues to be quite possibly the best football writer alive.
There is one specific aspect of the game I do want to analyze, and that’s San Francisco’s last goal-to-go sequence. A lot of people are talking about the defensive holding penalty that wasn’t called on the last pass attempt to Michael Crabtree. Possibly because Jim Harbaugh started that conversation before the game was even over by gesturing at the referees with a wildly exaggerated version of the signal for a holding penalty and visibly screaming, “Holding!” on the sidelines. Possibly.
He has a point. And every 49ers fan who thinks this no-call was decisive also has a point. The thing is, I can’t find it within myself to be outraged about that no-call. I don’t think a single referee in the NFL throws that flag unless he’s over 10,000% sure a penalty occurred. It’s pretty clear from the slow-motion replay that a penalty probably occurred, but in real-time, real-speed, are you really confident enough to make that call?
So, that’s not what I’m upset about. What I’m upset about is that this fourth down play was the third straight pass attempt to Michael Crabtree. Kaepernick was under heavy pressure on all three passing attempts, so he went to his “hot read.” A hot read is the receiver who the quarterback automatically throws to if he doesn’t have time to read the play and find out who’s open. It’s a very important part of any passing play. Since Colin Kaapernick took over at quarterback, Michael Crabtree has been the best receiver on the 49ers, so it probably seems completely reasonable for him to be Kaepernick’s hot read on plays like this.
It’s not.
The fact that Vernon Davis doesn’t appear to have been the hot read on any of those three attempts is not only astonishing, it’s the only thing about the game I’m genuinely angry about. Crabtree is a spectacular athlete, but Vernon Davis might be the best overall athlete in the NFL. More importantly, he has a massive size advantage. His skillset seems much more suited to the situation the 49ers found themselves in than Crabtree’s. Honestly? If I were the 49ers, I would’ve called four straight passing plays and Davis would’ve been the hot read on all four.
It’s okay, though. It’s not like he famously came up with a franchise-altering catch in nearly the exact same situation in last year’s playoffs or anyth–oh.
