Many of you have had this fantasy, um, thought: What if Jon Gruden or Jim Harbaugh were the 49ers head coach?
Some of you might have even pondered a name such as Brian Billick. What would a Super-Bowl-winning coach with an offensive background do with the smash-mouth Niners?
Well, wonder no more.
Based on his give-and-take with the Bay Area media today, one got the
distinct feeling that Billick, the former Ravens coach and current FOX
analyst, would be in full air-it-out mode if he was calling the shots
for San Francisco against Seattle on Sunday.
Billick, 56, who will cover Sunday’s game for FOX, recalled two 2009
games in which the 49ers trailed big at halftime and came out slinging
it in the second half, with far better results.
“We did the Houston game last year when they got down by 20-something.
It was, ‘OK, put the game plan in the back pocket, let’s go,'” Billick
said. “And all of a sudden it’s up and down the field. The Green Bay
game last year where they got down by 20 early and it was, ‘OK, forget
what we’re going to do — let’s open this thing up.’ And they moved the
ball.
“So yeah, that’s a tough question for you because you want to be a
certain thing with (Frank) Gore, and the line and big and physical and
good defense, but they’re not that right now. We’ll see. We’ll see how
they attack them.”
Billick’s memory is accurate.
In a 24-21 loss at Houston, the Niners, who trailed 21-0 at halftime,
had 247 yards in the second half (50 in the first half). In a 30-24 loss
at Green Bay, the Niners, who trailed 23-3 at halftime, had 227 yards
in the second half (57 in the first half).
The move back to Alex Smith, a spread quarterback at Utah, coupled with
the loss of Gore could signal a change in offensive philosophy Sunday.
Billick, the Vikings offensive coordinator from 1994-98, said he
understood the move to insert Alex Smith in place of Troy Smith, a
quarterback he coached in 2007 with the Ravens.
Billick was also in the booth for the Niners’ 34-16 loss to the Packers
last week and noted that Smith, who completed 10 of 25 passes, needed to
work on his accuracy.
“That’s the challenge for Troy,” Billick said. “He’s like a lot of
strong-armed quarterbacks. You’ve got to be accurate to play in this
league.”
• Billick hired Mike Singletary in Baltimore, where Singletary coached the inside linebackers from 2003-04.
Billick, not surprisingly, didn’t criticize his former colleague. But he
acknowledged — without spelling it out — that Singletary has taken
his lumps in his first two full seasons as a head coach.
“Until you sit in that chair, you don’t know,” Billick said. “I worked
my whole life to become a head coach, you do everything you can to
prepare and then you sit down and go, “Holy s–, I have no idea.”
Because Hillary Clinton aside, this is no place for on-the-job training,
right? So, yeah, there is a growth. I don’t care what your background
is … You learn as you go.”
Comments are closed.