49ers Answer All Questions in One Half

Sunday afternoon was an example of the way the champion San Francisco 49ers played last year for Coach Bill Walsh.

En route to a record 18-1 record in 1984, they opened big first-half leads with passes by Joe Montana and runs by Wendell Tyler and Roger Craig.

Defensively, they dominated the other team each week, worrying the quarterback and shutting down the run.

And in the second half last year, most of the time, they held on to win.

So this was 1984 football the 49ers played at Anaheim. They knocked the Rams around in a 28-0 first half and held on with their prevent defense to win, 28-14.

Which leaves one question.

Where were the 49ers earlier this year when they started by losing four of their first seven games on their National Football League schedule?

Their critics--including coaches, scouts and writers--have come up with four explanations:

--Bay Area writers say Montana has just had an off year.

--Many coaches say the defensive teams facing the 49ers have been taking away Walsh’s famous short-passing game and forcing Montana to throw long, which isn’t his forte.

--Many scouts say the 49ers’ attitude has been their problem. As Seattle scout Abe Gibron commented Sunday: “The (49er) players loved their Super Bowl press clippings last year and forgot they had to perform on the field to win again this year.”

--Other coaches and scouts say the problem has been the attitude of San Francisco’s opponents, who approach each game in a frenzy to beat the world champions.

“There is some truth in all of that,” Walsh said Sunday. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if the two attitude answers were closest to the truth. This is a tough league to play in when you’re the defending champion. Your players see things differently as champions than they did when you were challenging. And so do your opponents.”

What about Montana. Has an off year by the quarterback brought you down?

“I wish football were that simple, but it isn’t,” Walsh said. “Joe has been part of the problem, of course. We all have. One reason he played so well today is that we were executing effectively in the other phases of the game. This took the pressure off Joe.”

What about San Francisco’s ball-control passes. Is the NFL taking away your favorite plays?

“The other teams haven’t. We have,” Walsh said. “Little things--dropped passes, penalties, missed assignments, underthrows, all the things that can go wrong with an offense have been going wrong with ours. Until today, we haven’t been able to get our game plan untracked.”

Walsh agrees with the coaches and scouts who hold that such lapses are usually due to a lack of concentration and intensity. In short, as Gibron and others keep saying, the 49ers’ attitude problem has been their undoing.

“Here’s what happens,” Walsh said. “You have to sacrifice a lot to put together an 18-1 season--as we did last year. Then, six months later, it isn’t easy to come back and try to do it all over again. It isn’t easy to get back in the right frame of mind so soon after showing your mental toughness for 18 consecutive weeks. You don’t want to admit that you have a (attitude) problem. But you know it exists. We’ve been self-destructing.”

Self-destructing with some of the finest personnel in the league.

“Unless you’re right at your best, it’s tough to do (win) in the NFL,” Walsh said. “We showed in the first half (against the Rams) that we’re still capable of the kind of football we played last year. But we aren’t a playoff team yet. We’re some distance from being a playoff team.”