An Englishman’s Love Affair With San Francisco

I thought I’d do something different today and talk about something I’ve wanted to for a while – the best Niners starting lineup of my time watching as a fan. Before we can do that, though, I should probably share with you how my obvious NFL fandom (see the previous 17 weeks of NFL picks!) came into being.

I first became aware of the NFL when my Dad would talk to me about his days watching the 1985 Bears and the punky QB known as McMahon on Channel 4 in the UK. As a kid of 7 or 8, the whole thing sounded insane to me, but I’ve always been a sports buff and lover, so I was intrigued. Not long after that, on a routine weekly shop to the local Tesco, my mother made my day by informing me she would buy me a Nintendo 64 game if I wanted. Faced with an avalanche of choices, my eye was drawn to this:

When I got home and played it later, the first team I selected turned out to be the team I’d follow forevermore – the Red and Gold, the historically great, the first alphabetically (in that game at least) San Francisco 49ers. I have vivid and strong memories of playing that game – having no idea what a salary cap was, wondering why the team never seemed to have any of it for me to make trades – and having absolutely no idea what was going on. An inauspicious start, but just like with any interest, I dug into more of it over the next few years.

The 49ers, it turned out, wore red, were historically great, but had fallen on hard times and weren’t winning games any more – not unlike my sports teams in football – Liverpool – and rugby league – Wigan Warriors – at the time. Hell, even my cricket team – Lancashire – won their last major trophy in 1998 before a pretty long drought. As I was learning about the 49ers, and the similarities kept hitting me – my teams wore red, all my teams were historically famous, but not so successful in the modern era. So…it was time to pick up another one. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, I never really knew how to watch the NFL, and it’s popularity would die off a little bit in the UK in the 1990s, not helped by a series of baffling decisions, including letting little-known ‘alternative comedians’ The Vicious Boys present Channel 4’s coverage. Rumours, to this day, persist of their ‘friendship’ with producers at Channel 4 getting them a job they were wholly unqualified and unprepared for.

Anyway, suffice it to say that NFL was not exactly a hot television property in the UK, so it was often hard to find. Most of my NFL knowledge came from watching the odd highlight and score on Sky Sports News, and all I knew was that the 49ers weren’t doing too well, especially in 2004, when it felt like every week started with me eating a bowl of some terrible cereal before an equally terrible schoolday and looking at the TV screen to see them on the wrong end of another scoreline. By now, I’d upgraded to Madden 2005 (still the best Madden ever) on the Gamecube, and was learning ever more about the game. Unfortunately, the Niners sucked.

Around 2005, however, the 49ers were beginning a rebuild, and I managed to find coverage on Sky, which only felt fair, since they spend half their time showing extreme bass fishing and christ knows what else. So now, twice a Sunday, and overnight, I’d see NFL games, presented by the (in my view) all-time great duo of Kevin Cadle and Nick Halling, Better yet, I could video record (yep, really, it was 2005) Monday Night Football on Channel 5, presented, usually, by Mike Carlson and whoever they could get to sit in a studio between 1 and 4am on a Monday morning, firstly Colin Murray and latterly Danny Kelly. This gave me a grounding in the NFL, and I’d go on to coaching at the immortal Bolton Bulldogs the following year, but I still couldn’t scratch the 49er itch – we were bad enough to *never* be on TV. Oh, I also bought an NFL magazine/paper in the UK called First Down. RIP. Anywho, fast forward to 2006 onwards, and finally, I was able to watch the 49ers. Illegally. Via internet stream. God bless you, and RIP, TVUPlayer, Sopcast, et al.

I’ve rarely missed a 49ers game since then, either online or in person. I have seen three 49ers games in my life, and two of them were in San Francisco, which for me is the greatest goddamn city in the world. I saw Troy Smith beat a terrible Broncos team at Wembley. I saw Blaine Gabbert win a game as a starting quarterback, on my first visit to San Francisco. I watched Brian Hoyer start at QB for the 49ers in the 2017 season opener, and somehow, I snuck on the field before kickoff.

I stay up til 4am for Monday Night Football, I freeze to death in December watching Thursday Night Football, and I’ve stayed up for 2 – count em – 2 – heartbreaking Super Bowl losses, through Beyonce Powercuts. Do I feel qualified? You bet I do. (For those who get the in-joke, YES I DO). So this is my favourite 49ers lineup, 2005-2024. Enjoy.

Quarterback – Brock Purdy (2023-present)

There’s only one real choice here, unfortunately. Alex Smith had one beautiful redemption season under Harbaugh, Kaepernick hit the league like lightning for two and a half years, but after that, it’s almost that infamous Browns jersey of failed QBs. Ken Dorsey? Cody Pickett? JT O’Sullivan? Shaun Hill? I’m good, thanks. Garoppolo also gave a lot of good times, but taketh them away far too often with stupid errors, and I’m fairly sure the reason my anxiety is still so bad to this day is watching ‘Jimmy G’ drop back so much. Purdy himself, ‘elite’ or not, ‘system QB’ or not, and whatever else, is, at the time of writing, clearly the best talent to be behind centre in my years watching the Niners. Anyone who watches the games sees how good Purdy is – you can tell the ones who don’t.

Running Back – Frank Gore (2005-2014)

This is tougher, as between Gore and McCaffrey I’ve had the pleasure of seeing two probable Hall of Fame running backs in my time watching the Niners. I ended up going with Gore, because while McCaffrey is amazing, he’s more of a compliment to the main entree (the offense in general), than the whole meal, which Gore often was in those dreadful, dreadful dry years. Also, Gore played with toughness, heart, and passion for a series of terrible head coaches and offenses for almost his entire career, only getting a break, much like the fanbase, in the Harbaugh years. For these reasons, he always felt like the fans representative on the field, and I’m glad to see him back in the 49ers organisation – he’s one of us.

Fullback –

OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Fullback – Kyle Juszczyk (2017-Present)

This one’s pretty easy – we haven’t always used a fullback, and while Bruce Miller and Moran Norris were good players in their own right, the hard-to-spell one’s got to take the cake here. One of the first major signings of the Shanahan era, and one of the most unheralded but important players on the roster.

Tight End – Vernon Davis (2006-2015)

OK, so I get it – on pure talent, it should probably be George Kittle, and I love Kittle to pieces. He’s an extremely underrated part of what the team does now, and his character is basically ‘fanboy made good’, which makes him very hard not to root for. But you have to understand where the team, and I as a fan, was when Vernon Davis got drafted by us in 2006. I obsessively watched his college highlights, couldn’t wait for him to get on the field and help Alex Smith, and wore this Youtube video out for months afterwards:

Why? We had a playmaker, for what felt like the first time in forever (in my case, only 2 years, but that was more than enough!) and someone who was worth watching for explosive plays. It took a while to come together, and took in some bollockings by Mike Singletary along the way, but it was all worth it for one sweet, sweet playoff moment:

Those tears were ours as a fanbase. That reaction was mine in my home at 11pm. We had waited all those years for that moment. For me, it was my first playoff game as a fan – I had no idea what any of this felt like. Classic moment, classic player. Davis was dynamic and exciting at a time we were neither dynamic nor excited, and he had some huge moments for the team like the above, so while he probably didn’t have the production Kittle has had if I’m picking a favourite team, he’s in my heart and has to be in it.

Receivers

Deebo Samuel (2019-present) & Anquan Boldin (2013-2015)

I think my choices here perhaps speak more to my personal favouritism in how I like football to be played than anything specifically to do with ability. There’s an easy argument for Brandon Aiyuk of the current side here, whereas Michael Crabtree (“sorry receivah” game aside) would probably get some traction too. For me, it’s two of the best examples of tough, gritty receiver play to ever put on a 49ers uniform. Deebo is the heart and soul of the current bully-ball approach. He’s both capable of taking a game over running or catching the ball, as well as using his incredible YAC ability to flip the field in one play. Arguably his finest moment in my time as a fan was the 2021 season, when he dragged a flatlining team with an average QB to within 10 minutes of the Super Bowl. I was commonly heard to repeat the refrain ‘MVPeebo Samuel’ during the last 4-5 weeks of the strange, crazy ride, and by the end of it all, I was only half joking. He’s an incredible player, and 24 hours from the Super Bowl, will hopefully get his big moment in the sun tomorrow night.

Boldin is cut from the same cloth in a number of ways, and while not as freakish an athlete, may be one of the toughest players to ever play the game. He was a player I always loved watching in my nascent days following the NFL, so when he arrived via trade following the heart-breaking SB loss in 2013, there was a genuine excitement over getting to see him in my team’s uniform. While he may not have lit up the stat sheets a la Aiyuk or even Crabtree to a certain extent, I’ll always enjoy having got to see him fight in the early 2010 wars against Seattle, a fantastic player who could be remembered more fondly if we’d just got ourselves over the hump in those years. My one regret following the San Francisco trips is that I was unable to see him play – he was unfortunately injured when I first arrived in 2015. Still, always fun to remember him playing.

Offensive Line

Trent Williams (2020-present) – Mike Iupati (2010-2014) – Jonathan Goodwin (2011-2013) – Alex Boone (2009-2015) – Joe Staley (2007-2019)

I’m cheating a little to get Joe Staley in, by picking him in a position he only played in his rookie year (RT), but there’s no way he could miss out as one of the best five offensive linemen in my tenure watching the 49ers. Trent Williams is simply a better LT, but with no other good options on the bookend side, Staley, the one-club man, legend, and heartbreakingly two-time Super Bowl loser, comes in. These two guys can pass block like no one else, and are pretty nasty in the run game too. In a world where there barely seems to be enough good offensive linemen to travel the NFL as a whole, I feel fortunate to have largely had the 49ers QB’s blind side effectively protected for 16 of my 18 years watching.

The middle of the line is pure Harbaugh-era Niners – Iupati, Goodwin and Boone are all nasty, horrible run blockers, but also capable in the pass game. At one point in my life, I was an offensive line coach, so I absolutely loved the nasty, take no prisoners approach that Harbaugh’s power game employed. The Harbaugh Niners fought trench wars with Carolina, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and many others, and thanks to that triumvate, often came out on top. Not bad, considering Jonathan Goodwin was an unheralded signing, and Boone was an alcoholic UDFA who most didn’t give a chance of sticking in the NFL. Iupati, meanwhile, held up well after being one of our first round choices in 2010, and in fact, has a position on a shelf in my bedroom, also held by his compatriot Anthony Davis:

The San Francisco corner of my bedroom – and yes, that’s a signed picture from Trent Baalke. In my defence, I got it in 2011, when he was briefly looking like a top executive in the league.

It’s quite shocking looking at how short Iupati and Goodwin’s tenures were, and arguably the Niners oline has never quite been as nasty and dominant since, although the development of the likes of Aaron Banks suggests that we may be making our way back there.

Defensive Line

I’m playing a 4-3 defense, and messing around with the alignments and positions a little to get the best 11 on the field…

Nick Bosa (2019-Present) – Justin Smith (2008-2014) – Arik Armstead (2015-present) – Aldon Smith (2011-2014)

In my time as a fan, the Niners have invested some pretty serious capital in the defensive line – not least currently, where Armstead and Bosa play alongside 1st round picks like Javon Kinlaw, heavy free agency investments like Javon Hargreave, and big trade splashes like Chase Young. It’s probably no surprise therefore that I’m capable of building a d-line to rival any team in history. Arguably Armstead looks like the weakest link of the four, but the fact I’ve seen his prime pushes him over one of the big names in the past like Bryant Young, whereas against more present-day contemporaries his longevity wins out over the likes of, say Deforest Buckner. Also, in this line, his do-everything attitude and run-stopping ability compliment the other three’s games tremendously.

Not much more can be said about Bosa than has already been by much more qualified luminaries than myself, but it’s pretty clear that he’s one of the best defensive players in the league right now, and his ascension to the 49ers, sparked by the bizarre decision of the Cardinals to take a baseball player #1 overall, is arguably the defining moment of the Shanahan era.

Away from the two current stars, it’s impossible not to pick the two-Smith tandem for the other spots, if only for their complete dominance in 2011 and 2012, up until Justin Smith’s triceps tear. The elder Smith (Justin) seemed a bizarre free agent signing by a flatlining coaching staff in 2008, but in fairness to messers McCloughan and Nolan, they had found a defensive leader and the heartbeat of what was to become the first great 49ers team in my era as a fan – they just werent around for it. Justin Smith came to perhaps embody the Harbaugh era more than any player – blue-collar tough, never giving in, and a grit and grind mentality that would make Dan Campbell bite his own kneecaps off in envy. It helps that his effort was matched by obvious talent, both against the run and pass – a truly multi-dimensional defensive threat that gave offensive lines fits. If he doesn’t tear his triceps leading into the 2012 playoffs, I’m convinced that the 49ers wouldn’t have just won the Super Bowl, but would have won it handily.

He could have been a one-man wrecking crew, but in Harbaugh’s first draft, he found a stable-mate in the neophyte passrusher Aldon Smith. To sum up Aldon Smith takes more words than I’m able to devote here, but he had the quickness and urgency of Bosa mixed with the power of Micah Parsons. To put it simply, he was a phenomenon. He would unfortunately flame out of the league after only really two full seasons at his best, and we’ll never know what have become of him, but in combination with his namesake, he was a true difference-maker of the kind that we wouldn’t see again as fans until Bosa would arrive in 2019.

Linebackers

Fred Warner (2018-present) – Patrick Willis (2007-2014) – Dre Greenlaw (2019-present)

Two of these were about as easy as they come. Willis can’t be left out of any all-time team, even, I suspect, for fans of a deeper vintage than myself – the man’s just gone into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and he was a difference-maker for the good teams (under Harbaugh) and the hard-to-watch teams (under almost everyone else). It’s a good thing that those noted football minds Mike Nolan and Mike Singletary managed to get past the fact he was ‘undersized’, because Willis could hit like a truck and cover like a defensive back. In many ways, Willis was one of the first standard bearers for the modern linebacker, expected to not just play the ‘run downs’, but be capable of covering the pass, too.

That brings us neatly on to the other two choices – and I’ll explain the difficult one too. First, the easy one – Fred Warner may be the best linebacker in football currently, and he flies around the field both in stopping the run and the pass. It’s not an exaggeration to say that almost the entire defensive scheme would probably fall apart if he wasn’t at the helm of it. He’s a truly special football player, who routinely makes insane and unlikely plays, and he’s the heartbeat of the ‘modern’ 49ers. It’s hard to imagine anyone getting beyond Willis or Warner in coverage.

To fill out the group, I went for Warner’s partner in crime, Greenlaw, rather than Willis’s, in Bowman. It ultimately boiled down to two reasons. I fucking loved Navorro Bowman, by the way – a fantastic player, a huge hitter, and a big leader on the teams who had the titanic battles with the Seahawks I loved so much. However, what he didn’t have in abundance were two things; one – coverage skills – in the Fangio 3-4 scheme he was very much the hitter and run stuffer, which wouldn’t fly in this scheme – but two, and more importantly, since I’m not putting this team out on the field – consistency. Bowman at his best may have been better than Greenlaw, but I feel like we only got to see Bowman’s best for maybe two years at best – sadly, the horrendous achilles injury robbed us of the best of him. Greenlaw, meanwhile, has been functioning at the top of his game pretty much since he arrived in San Francisco, and with great range and nasty hitting ability, he’s a great compliment to the other two here and a fantastic player in his own right. The best compliment you can give a player is that you feel better when he’s in the game, and that’s always true of Greenlaw.

Cornerbacks

Chartavius Ward (2022-present) – Carlos Rogers (2011-2013)

Cutting this down to two was actually harder than I expected – if you sit there long enough, you realise there’s usually been one good corner on the 49ers each year I’ve been watching (sans 2020 and the Brian Allen catastrophe!) – I considered, among others, Walt Harris, Tarell Brown and Demmondre Lenoir here, and even Richard Sherman in his brief rivalry-crossing spell (and I think that probably had some brilliant impacts off the field that we probably don’t give enough weight and credit to), but I eventually went with these two, even though Ward is fairly new and Rogers’ tenure was, like many of the Harbaugh era players I’ve picked out, quite short. The reasons why are fairly simple – if I’m picking top players, players I want to see, then I’m picking guys I don’t worry about in coverage. The current Niners are still really trying to find the best fit at #2 CB, but one thing they can (usually) guarantee is a couple of plays a game by Ward. Meanwhile, Rogers, while a flameout in Washington, was about as good as it got for us, making a Pro Bowl and leading an inexperienced DB group with some excellent playmaking. I’m keeping an eye on Lenoir to break in here if he continues his upward trajectory, though.

Side note – perhaps one of the interesting ones is that one of our most expensive signings ever, Nate Clements, didn’t even warrant slight consideration. What a bust. Maybe my all-bust team should be next…

Safeties

Jimmie Ward (2014-2022) – Donte ‘Hitner’ (2011-2013)

This was difficult, as there’s no real standouts – Dashon Goldson suffers from being a contract year hero, Tashaun Gipson doesn’t have the longevity to break in here, and nor does Hufanga – hopefully his door hasn’t closed, considering the ACL injury – while Jaquiski Tartt was a great player, but his last game, and *that* dropped INT, lingers in the memory. In the end, I’ve gone for one uber-consistent swiss army knife in Ward, and a standard-bearer for the brute years in Whitner.

I firmly believe that Ward might have become a fantastic player if various coaching staffs hadn’t messed around with his position on such a regular basis. As it was, he served the team admirably in multiple roles, before finally hitting his best in the Shanahan era at FS. He never gave any less than his best, and often made some great plays to go along with that.

Whitner, on the other hand, was a bit of a flash in the pan, but it was a blinding flash. In a defense that badly needed a hitter, leader, and someone to set the standard, Whitner never let down the 49ers. His hit on Pierre Thomas in the epic divisional game in 2011 may have actually been the moment that the 49ers – my 49ers – finally announced their return to the upper echelons.

And finally…

If I’m choosing specialists, then send me Robbie Gould, a man who never let down the 49ers, especially in the clutch (I hope Jake Moody isn’t needed tomorrow!) and probably Andy Lee to punt – the man with the golden leg who lit up some terrible 49ers teams.

Finally…we need a long-snapper. And who better to pick than the man who’s face exemplified the pre-Harbaugh years. Yeah, you know who it is…

God speed, Brian Jennings – and god bless you, San Francisco.

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