SAN FRANCISCO – The 49ers blew out the Bills by 41 points, but the game was close late into the second quarter. With a minute until halftime the Bills were losing by seven points and they had the ball. They had just put together an 80-yard field goal drive against the 49ers elite defense. They were fighting and they were having some success.
But then Patrick Willis stripped Scott Chandler, Alex Smith threw a 28-yard touchdown pass to Michael Crabtree on the very next play to make the score 17-3 at halftime and the Bills didn’t score another point for the rest of the game. In the fourth quarter, the 49ers second-string defense forced the Bills’ first-string offense to go three-and-out. That’s how bad the Bills played.
After the game, I asked Donte Whitner in the locker room what changed for the Bills after Scott Chandler’s fumble. Here’s what Whitner said:
WHITNER: You can see their body language. When you’re on the road and you’re playing a good football team and you turn the football over, it deflates you. And that’s what we wanted to do – we wanted to jump on them early, we wanted to be physical we wanted to run the football and we wanted to be physical on defense by not letting them run the football – and that’s what we did. That’s a good offense over there. Coming into today they had the most touchdowns in the league.
ME: How could you tell they were deflated? Could you describe their body language?
WHITNER: There’s only so long you can go through a week with a coaching staff talking about certain things and they don’t work. Eventually the players start to quit on you. I’m not saying they quit, but the body language said they weren’t really into it. I just feel for those players over there because I know how hard they work, I was there for five years. To continually see them go through the same things that I went through and we went through as a defense and as a team…it’s not getting better. There’s only one certain ways you can get better with that, and that’s bring in a new coach, bring in a new philosophy and try to change the culture. That’s what you need if you want to go from a losing team to a winning team – you need an entire culture change.
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Maybe they can get Jack Harbaugh
I’m sorry Chan, maybe you should not have STACKED THE BOX!
Blame 23, he needed to see it!
Dude! I appreciate your joy at the win and satisfaction about being right about, ahem, stacking the box, but Prime, my bro, do we have to read that all week? Please?
Last couple of weeks some here have been unrelentingly annoying with repetitious obsessions. “Two wrongs don’t make a right”; ‘member? : -)
Congrats prime. Today it’s you who looms like the most annoying poster on this blog.
Today’s performance comes against a very poor defense. Lets see what our passing game does next week against a Giants team that held our passing game to 1 WR completion and one third down conversion all game.
Actually think it is a tie between him and 23j..
Bayarea, If you thought today was annoying, dude I’m pulling your boy toys song and dance all week. Maybe all year. It’s time to STACK THE BOX Bay!
You said he could not throw deep, he did!
You said he could not beat a defense when they stack the box, he did.
Regardless if BUF is terrible or not, he made the right calls amd made all the throws, accurately. Sorry Bay, wrong again!
Come on Tom Coughlin, STACK THAT BOX!
Hey prime, don’t be a tool. The Niners won, that should be enough.
I am happy with AS play today, but it is Prim Tin Tin who is the biggest hater on the blog, we are all haters if we disagree with Prim Tin Tin.
Sorry tree it is what it is with some specific haters and me. I apologize to everyone right now but sorry guys, I’m serving crow all week to Bay and 23.
If you see Prime Time in the comment section, just ignore me.
Neal come over here and STACK THAT BOX!
Why? Do you need the attention?
The niners won. Let them rant.
Prime I don’t want to be anywhere near your box or BS for that matter.Thanks for the invite anyway
Next week the 49ers play the Giants. Last year the Precious had a career game against the Saints and then reverted to normal against the Giants.
Hopefully history won’t repeat.
hopefully…..duh
Prime ,
Did you watch the game? Buffalo Unniversity did not stack the box. I’m sure the Giants will though.
>>Buffalo Unniversity
There Jordo goes again. It was nothing the Niners did, success was all about what the Bills didn’t do.
I saw the backups on the bench laughing and cracking jokes on the Bills bench. Really sad to see. They didnt even care that they were losing.
GO NINERS
I can appreciate Whitner’ candid comments and that he has an affinity with the Bills, but there’s no need to go into another teams locker room like that.
Let them clean their own laundry.
Years of frustration on that team. He needed to vent! I’ll give him a pass.
AES,
Whitner has an affinity for the Bills? How so?
I can’t really blame Whitner here. He endured 5 years of suck in Buffalo. He needs to let that out.
And let it go.
Man, I had a bet going! Had the Vikes to cover, bears to cover, NO/SD over, niners to cover and providing the texans cover tomorrow, the Ravens not covering against the lowly chiefs screwed me outta 520 bones. Damn!
79-3 over the last 2 weeks. Lots of good times recently. The skirts and pompoms come of for the next 3 weeks though. Giants, SEA, AZ.
Listen I am not at all trying to diminish what Alex did today. What the entire team did today. Unfortunately today was the equivalent of a high school wrestler having to wrestle a female in his division.
The boy an average high school wrestler ends up winning his most lopsided victory of the year. He has three hard take downs in the first minute. His opponent begins to show signs of quitting by her body language. In the next thirty seconds, he slams her to the mat and pins her. Then thrusts his fist in the air claiming victory.
The boy has a small group of supporters who take to their blogs and write about his dominant victory. Not caring that it was over the weakest opponent in the state. All the supporters cared about is the fact that on this day, this average wrestler dominated. They went on to flood the local blogs with chants of ” they stacked the box” “they stacked the box”.
Unfortunately for this small group of loyal but misguided followers, the following week the average wrestler had to face the state champion who had all but thoroughly embarrassed him the year before. Hopefully the average wrestler gained some form of courage from the win against the weaker girl to help motivate him in his next weeks match so save face from the last time he was on the big stage…….
Sorry could not hear you with all the feathers flying out of your fat mouth. Swallow your crow before speaking.
Bay, did the Bills STACK THAT BOX or what?
Bring on the Gmen!
This has to be one of most bizarre comparisons I have ever heard you use.
Like I told prime, 49ers won, leave it at that.
Bizarre cause no matter what they will never give Alex his due. It’s always something. Now we are apparently beating opponents that are equivalent to highschool female wrestlers. Tell me that is not a hater or what? And now your telling me tree to back off? C’mon man!
Bay and 23, probably same guy, deserve everything they get.
You are smoking crack if you think the 49ers got “thoroughly embarrassed” by the giants last year. If I’m reading too deep into your metaphor, go ahead and ignore me (but also maybe just say what you mean and find another outlet for reliving your glory days in creative writing 101)
Alex Smith completed only one pass to wide receivers that afternoon and until the final minute of the game had not converted one third down all day. Pretty embarrassing wouldn’t you say?
taking the (eventual) superbowl champs to OT in the conference championship game, and only losing because of 2 special teams turnovers…? not at all an embarrassment. Would you call Eli’s performance an embarrassment? Their offense couldn’t move the ball either, but they got lucky.
Latino,
I just called immigration. They’ll be contacting Grant for your contact information.
@bay:
You know what you should have had before you posted your analogy? One of these.
bay, you are sounding like a fan of the team that just had their @sses handed to them.
“it wasn’t anything they (opponents) did, we just played terrible.”
Really sad.
Absolutely horrid exaggerated comparison you got there Bay, I can’t believe I read the whole thing!
That ‘girl’ was in the top 32 best wrestlers in the state and she had the most points coming in too! Enjoy brother!
Why do people complain when the niners win, they beat the teams they needed to beat, thats what good teams do, regardless if Alex passes for 100 yards or even 300, the running game is so dominant that passing on some games will not even matter (jets game), it was an all around win and the same goes when they lose (vikings game)!!!
Lets go 9ers!!!!
This isn’t college, it’s the NFL. Who cares if the Bills aren’t good? “Any Given Sunday.”
If the Bills continue to lose by 40 points for the rest of the season, then maybe you guys will have a point. Until then, enjoy the victory and quit acting like every game against a less talented team should be a walk in the park.
They complain because they have spent years posting their hate for Alex Smith on blogs. They have invested much of their time saying how bad he is and now that the empirical evidence is showing that he is a good quarterback they can’t face the truth. Trust me, it will get even more ridiculous as the niners continue to win.
Go Niners!
Anyone who downplays this game should do well to remember one thing – Buffalo was the NFL leader in points scored and among the top teams in total offense. They were held to 3 points on a field goal that was more the result of a very good kick return than it was the offense. This was the same team that dropped 28 on New England (a supposedly good defensive squad).
45 minus 3 = 42… Good job Cohn, even math eludes you.