San Francisco 49ers Preview: Chimera-thon

The San Francisco 49ers, my team, my boys, feels now more like watching tape from one side of a 2014 Pro Bowl game.  I am a realist and I know that growing a team from the ground up takes time and cultivation that is akin to franchise suicide, but this just feels… a little weird, I guess?  More than any other year than I can remember; it feels like I am rooting for the heroes of other team’s yesteryears.  It’s like a strange chimera or a Feejee Mermaid where Shanahan and York have carefully stitched together the dismembered bits to make this side show attraction.  It feels like a team made by committee.  But what am I supposed to do?  Buy new jerseys?  Ha!  Get the fuck out of here!

At least we still have our own, homegrown, stalwart of O-line awesome.  There is more than a little bit of me that wants to follow my spirit guide, Joe Staley, and share in his optimism for the 2018 season.  I can’t, but I would really like to.  I will just take it as a fortuitous sign in its simplest form that at least the 12-year veteran is starting off the season spry for a change and can muster a pocket for a Niners QB for as long as his little heart can.

If the run-pass option ends up being the sexy couture of the 2018 season as predicted, I have my doubts that the Red & Gold will find themselves ardent Super Bowl contenders, even though I am not proud of my skepticism of Jimmy G.  As it is, the fact that we Niners fans can take delight in Garoppolo finally connecting with Garçon I think may speak volumes on what to expect from what has yet to seem like a cohesive offense.  That said, the likes of veteran Alfred Morris looked tantalizing in the preseason.  Perhaps the former Washingtonians can find kismet here in the Bay.  I am just not sure I am seeing the cohesion that one would like to see, even with Marquise Goodwin and Jerick McKinnon.  Don’t get me wrong, I have the Polo Fever, too, as would anyone desperately clinging to some hopeful vice, but the management of down in the preseason has felt more like watching someone trying to slide Velcro™ past carpet, it just keeps catching and sticking in weird ways.

As for Niners D, if the lads are healthy, things look a lot better than they do when the preseason knocks out the depth chart by 25%.  Garrett Celek has continued to look mighty fine and the potential veteran leadership from Richard Sherman.  I do not have words for how tough it is to try to describe anything positive or ambitious about Richard Sherman as a long-standing Seahawks detractor.  As such, here is my way of dealing with the rather loud elephant in the locker room:  I hope our defense is better than the opposing team’s offense.  Sherman is good, he’s competent, he seems to be a unifying factor for the defense, and I will remain hopeful that my hesitancy is just blowback from having to stand so close to Pete Carroll for all of those years.

Now, this could all be just the wayward lamentation of a Niners fan moving to Vikings country, but I suspect I will have a lot of free time this post-season to iron my fandom paraphernalia and put it back into storage for another season.  Looking into my crystal ball, I am guessing 10-6 but with a bonus of losing the first 5 straight just to deaden the emotions of an entire fanbase.

At least I get to look forward to another season of always being surprised at the unexpected speed coming off Coach Shanahan as he sprints away from the end of interviews.  I have only seen it a handful of times, but when that man darts away from interviewers like a terrified rabbit it always fills me with a sense of joy!