Sunday, December 05, 1999
Players to watch
• Welcome to an encore performance of Jeff Blake's farewell tour as he does some more resume building.
Blake is starting to stack numbers Tony Dungy, or Brian Billick, or Bill Cowher, or any other quarterback-starved coach will love.
Never mind his 76 rating is better than Doug Flutie, his 11 TD passes are as many as Troy Aikman and Charlie Batch, or his 6.6 average per attempt is even with Trent Dilfer.
Blake is also second in the AFC in fourth-quarter passing with three touchdowns and no interceptions, and he's fifth in third-down passing, where his six touchdown passes are tied with Peyton Manning.
And this week he goes against a battered secondary that's allowed 23 touchdown passes, three more than even the Bengals.
• Another big game is needed out of inside linebackers Takeo Spikes and Brian Simmons. The Niners set up running back Charlie Garner for cutback runs, meaning all Bengals must stay in their gaps and not overpursue.
That goes double for Spikes and Simmons, one of the last lines of defense. Plus, they'll be taking fullback Fred Beasley head on, a player highly regarded as a lead blocker.
To complicate matters for Spikes and Simmons, Garner and Beasley both do damage catching the ball. Garner has the longest reception of the season for the Niners, a 53-yarder, and Beasley has been nearly as productive as the tight end.
The Bengals need an all-around game from their budding Pro Bowlers.
• The Niners have scored one touchdown in the last 18 quarters, but running back Charlie Garner can hurt you running and receiving. He's averaging six yards per touch (834 rushing, 320 catching), second in the NFC behind Marshall Faulk's 6.7.
He's just 5-foot-9, 187 pounds, but Garner gets people to miss. Plus, he's a terrific cut-back runner with nine rushes of 20 yards or more, tied with Bengals running back Corey Dillon for the NFL lead.
Garner leads the Niners with 12 plays of 20 more yards in finally getting a chance to break out of being type cast as a third-down back. He's already got a career-high for rushing yards and is carrying 14.3 times per game, double his career average.
How good of a season is Garner having? Only Hall-of-Famer Joe Perry had a faster pace to 1,000 yards in club history.
• The Niners best offense has been their best defense, which has scored five touchdowns this season. Left cornerback Darnell Walker has two of them, a 71-yard fumble return and 27-yard interception.
But Walker, in his seventh year, struggled against the Rams back in October when he joined the ever-growing list of cornerbacks tortured by Isaac Bruce. He lost his job, but is back this week because of a spate of injuries.
The 5-foot-8, 167-pound Walker has a severe size mismatch with the 205-pound Bengal wideouts in 6-2 Carl Pickens and 6-1 Darnay Scott. Throw in the fact no one has been abe to cover Scott deep the last month, the Niners often leave their corners one-on-one behind all-out blitzes and the Bengals no doubt have the bomb ticking.
Opposing quarterbacks have romped against the Niners' fifth worst pass defense in the NFL, completing 61.2 percent of their passes for nearly eight yards per attempt.
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