Week fifteen of the season saw teams playing their fourteenth games of the season. Very few eyes were on the game in the later slot, of the San Francisco 49ers hosting the Seattle Seahawks.
It was looked upon as a David vs Goliath affair, with the relative newcomers from the Californian backwater (with only the mere five Superbowl titles) not given a hope in hell of beating the extremely historic Washington State powerhouse (with their amazing haul of a single Superbowl title and an ultimate choke job).
The teams had met just a couple of weeks before, where the Seahawks had flown out easy winners in a 173-6 blowout. When asked about the game, one of their fans, an Elisha Starbuck, twenty-one, said it was the best performance she had seen in the thirty-one years she had been watching the Seahawks, and she was expecting much the same in the forthcoming game.
On the first possession it did look as if it might go the same way, the Seahawks flew down the field and got an early touchdown. They were so confident about the result that their kicker deliberately missed the PAT attempt. He’d have been better off deliberately missing the kick-off attempt as the 49ers returned the resulting kick-off ninety-eight yards for a touchdown. It was their first touchdown from a kick-off return in one hundred and twenty-four years (ed. are you sure this is right?)
When asked in the post-match interviews, the 49ers coach Kyle Shanahanahan said that it gave the team confidence that they could score touchdowns from anywhere on the field; which is why they were more than happy for the Seahawks to keep downing punts within the two yard line.
The 49ers were never behind in the game again, eking out another touchdown in the first half, before moving into overdrive with a display of field goal kicking for the ages. All whilst managing to stop the Seahawks from going on their own mega scoring binge as they had just two weeks before.
Shanahanahan spoke about how they had managed this in the post-match interview.
“Well, during the week I had a chat with good old Bobby Baldy our DC, and we came up with a plan to try something new and unheard of in San Francisco – tackling. Granted we think it needs a bit more work as a couple of Seahawks touchdowns showed in the second half, but it wasn’t a bad effort for a first attempt. We might try this new-fangled tackling thing in future games as well.”
The game was astonishing for an unbelievable series of events from the officiating crew, who consistently called penalties against both teams. Yes, even against the Seahawks. For a change it wasn’t just the 49ers shooting themselves in the foot with penalties. The Seahawks were getting called for everything they normally didn’t. They even got called for their speciality trick play of lining up a line-backer directly behind the quarterback at the snap. In total the Seahawks got called for one hundred and fourteen penalties worth a mile and a half in distance.
Billy Bob Microsoft, seventeen, a resident of Bellevue commented after the match. “I’ve been a Seahawks fan for thirty five years now, and a twelfth man for longer than that. This was my first away game. I couldn’t believe we were getting penalties called against us. It never happens at home games. We kept getting called for having twelve men on the field and a five yard penalty. What’s the point of being the twelfth man if we can’t be on the field? It’s a stupid rule.”
Seahawks head coach – Petey Carrollsinger – was so incandescent at this unheard of turn of events he almost swallowed his chewing gum. In the post-match interview he made his feelings clear.
“I couldn’t believe we were getting called for penalties whilst on defence. It has never happened in my thirty-two years here with the team. We never get called for GBH and attempted decapitation normally. I almost swallowed my gum I was so mad about it. What happened to the all the additional money we put in the zebra’s 401k’s. If I had have swallowed my gum then there would have been serious consequences, I can tell you. I’m only two years short of the thirty-seven years I need to break the world record for the longest time spent chewing the same piece of gum. And I don’t leave it on my bedpost overnight like that Lonnie Donegan amateur.”
The game ended up going to overtime after some more excellent tackling from the Bobby Baldy defence. The Seahawks won the toss with the double headed coin they had bunged the referee, but failed to get out of their own half due to some more tackling. The 49ers then managed to cobble together enough forward motion to give their kicker Robbie Goulden the chance to kick his fourth field goal of the game to win it all. Which he did. He really does put the Gould into red and gould.
The commentary boxes were chaos and mayhem. Even Harry Doyle popped up, shouting, “The 49ers win it, the 49ers win it, oh my god the 49ers win it.”
The 49ers move to a season best four wins, and are lining up a run to the 2024 playoffs.
The game also saw the first appearances of the 49ers on NFL Redzone this season that didn’t involve showing a touchdown scored against them. In fact there were relatively long period of screen time for the 49ers, a move which may bring additional fans to the previously little heard of new franchise.
A Hector Palo Alto, eighty-one, was quoted as saying, “I like the look of this new-fangled 49ers team, hopefully they can get a couple of minutes on future redzones instead of us seeing established teams like the Browns, Jags and Texans all the time.
When asked about the screen time the 49ers had got on Redzone this week, the host Scott Mmmbop Hanson said,
“We didn’t really have a lot of choice. There was only one other game in the same window. The one everyone wanted to see with the Patriots playing the Steelers. However beggars can’t be choosers, so we had to keep flicking to the Seahawks – 49ers games to fill in all the breaks in the other game. After all we do advertise ourselves as seven hours of commercial free football. We did try to dilute it with rehashing some highlights from earlier games, but there is a limit to what you can do with that. We are hoping that normal service is resumed next week.”
With two wins on the trot now for the 49ers, they are hoping that this is now normal service and they can wrap up the season with two more wins to match last season’s total to ramp up the false hope for coming seasons.