Put 50 on the 49ers

The Seahawks went wild and force-fed fiftyburgers to Buffalo last week and to Arizona the week before.

We were past due. Seattle needed to stop playing down to inferior competition and making chumps look like contenders.

This week, Seattle needs to make the defending NFC West champions look like chumps.

The 49ers are a very, very good team. Everyone expects a close, hard-fought game.

If Seattle wins in a close game, that would suffice.

However, if we aspire to greatness, then we need another statement game, a chimp dominance display of epic proportions. I want to see the Seahawks squawking triumphantly, flapping their wings, beating their chests, and jumping up and down with taloned feet on top of prone, self-soiling 49ers, emasculated and whimpering for mercy, their spirits broken, their psyches shattered, and their eardrums bleeding.

I mean this figuratively, of course. All of the action should be within the rules and between the whistles. None of the foregoing should be interpreted as support for cheap shots, poor sportsmanship, or chest-thumping taunts.



Seattle needs to dominate our opponent so thoroughly today that the 49ers have trouble defending their house against Arizona in the season finale. (Seattle fans should be rooting for Arizona to finish strong. Convincing wins over Chicago and San Francisco could save Ken Whisenhunt's job and help perpetuate the organization's dysfunction, keeping that division rival hobbled for at least one more year. More important, if the Seahawks can beat the 49ers today and the Rams next week, then a miracle Cardinals victory in San Francisco in the season finale could give Seattle the division title. Those are very, very long odds, but the best way to improve those odds would be for the Seahawks to inflict an unprecedented, devastating, demoralizing defeat upon the odious 49ers.)

Let's sort out the bad news first.

Seahawk disadvantages

1) The last time Seattle lost at home was last December. To San Francisco. With the playoffs on the line.

2) Jim Harbaugh routinely outcoaches Pete Carroll. In the Pac-10, Harbaugh at Stanford went 2-1 against Carroll at USC. In the NFC West, Harbaugh is 3-0 against Carroll. It is probably too much to hope that Carroll's coaching staff could ever outsmart Harbaugh's; instead, we must place our faith in our athletes and in the 12th Man.

3) At 5-2, the 49ers are a good road team.

4) The 49ers are hot. They are 6-1-1 in their last 8 games, and they're coming off a big win over New England last week.

5) Colin Kaepernick has added dangerous new dimensions to the San Francisco offense. Alex Smith was a game manager. Kaepernick is a game changer, a gifted runner who can throw the deep ball. Fortunately, the Seahawks have been practicing against a similarly gifted quarterback all season, so it's possible that our defense may have better answers for Kaepernick's skill set.

6) San Francisco is a run-oriented team. Seattle's defense led the league in stopping the run for the first six weeks of the season. That ended when we visited San Francisco in week seven; since then, Seattle has fielded one of the league's worst run defenses. We have gotten gouged on the ground repeatedly, routinely allowing opposing running backs to have their way with us. If we want to win today, we need to retire our turnstile run defense and bring back the brick wall we fielded the first six weeks of the season. We need Red Bryant to reassert his domination of the line of scrimmage.

Seahawk advantages

1) Seattle is on a massive roll. Since falling to 4-4 at midseason, the Seahawks are 6-1. Finally, we seem to be forming the habit of winning games, both home and away.

2) The 12th Man is a beast. Seattle is undefeated at home thus far this year. We must protect this house. Presumably, the fans will rise to the occasion and subject San Francisco to three hours of sonic purgatory.

3) San Francisco has waltzed through this season in 3/4 time: win win lose, win win lose, win win tie, win win lose, win win ???... The 49ers have not posted more than two consecutive victories all year.

4) Our team is relatively well rested. Two consecutive blowouts have given us opportunities to rest many of our starters in the second halves of each contest. The last two weeks could be considered half-byes.

5) Our offense has been firing on all cylinders. Russell Wilson is spreading the ball around and killing defenses with read option runs. Bizarrely, Buffalo continued to key on Marshawn Lynch exclusively last week, forcing Wilson to keep the ball himself and run over and over again. At times, Wilson looked almost exasperated by the Bills' insistence that he run so much, but he certainly made them pay. Unfortunately, in contrast to Arizona and Buffalo, the 49ers field a professional football defense, so yards and scores should be tougher to come by today.

6) Our secondary remains sound. Richard Sherman gets to play one more game before his case is resolved. Their hamstrings healed, Marcus Trufant and Walter Thurmond return to bolster a very deep secondary, brimming with young talent. Jeremy Lane and Byron Maxwell acquitted themselves admirably last week, and our safeties remain rock solid. I loved Earl Thomas' run on the pick six last week.

To paraphrase Cato, "San Francisco must be destroyed."