The Seattle Seahawks trounced the San Francisco 49ers with a 19-3 road win on Thanksgiving night, and linebacker Bruce Irvin decided to rub the victory in their arch-rival's social media faces.
Just after the game, Irvin trolled the Niners with this tweet, poking fun at 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh's team motto.
Whosss got it better than us?!!! NOOOBOODYYYY! #12thman
— Bruce Irvin (@BIrvin_WVU11) November 28, 2014
They meet again in a couple of weeks in Seattle. That should be fun.
And that's not a good combination when you pay for the whole enchilada.
So 49ers owner Jed York took to Twitter to express his frustration, apologizing to fans for the performance:
Thank you #49ersfaithful for coming out strong tonight. This performance wasn't acceptable. I apologize for that
— Jed York (@JedYork) November 28, 2014
The Niners play their cross-bay rivals, the Oakland Raiders next week in a must-win game to keep up in the playoff picture while Jim Harbaugh's future hangs in the balance.
"We know what we have to do now," the 49ers head coach said right after Thursday's game. "We've got to come back and win them all. We'll set our jaw to that."
To reach the playoffs, his 7-5 team technically might not have to "win them all." But they must win three of the four games and somehow hope to gain the tiebreaking advantage over several other teams that will probably have 10 victories.
Brandon Jacobs days of running over defenses may be over, but the former NFL star isn't done running his mouth.
The two-time former New York Giants running back made it clear Thursday there's no love lost between him and 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh. Jacobs spent one unhappy and frustrating season in 2012 playing for Harbaugh and the 49ers before ending his career in 2013 where he started — with the Giants.
The bruising back was vocal about his lack playing time while on the west coast and used social media to criticize Harbaugh and the 49ers organization. And it sounds like he still holds a grudge.
“I have two rings and he don’t,’’ Jacobs said of Harbaugh on WFAN’s “Boomer & Carton Show.” “He’s a bitch. It’s not that he was a bitch, he is a bitch and that’s why he hasn’t won anything.’’
The 31-year-old Jacobs played nine years in the NFL, the first seven with the Giants, earning two Super Bowl rings. As a free agent heading into the 2012 season, he opted to take slightly more money from the 49ers, which seemed like a good fit.
It never worked out. Jacobs’ knee was an issue from the start, and when he became healthy he barely got on the field — five rushing attempts for seven yards in two games. He angered Harbaugh and the 49ers by using Twitter and Instagram to express his longing for the Giants and to complain he was “on the team rotting away.’’ Jacobs asked for his release, which was not granted. Harbaugh eventually suspended Jacobs for the final three games.
“I have one regret in my career and that’s going to the 49ers when I could have stayed in New York,’’ Jacobs said. “I just wanted to see what stuff was like with another team, and it didn’t work out for me. I wasn’t liked, to be honest with you. … I thought I was being held hostage because of the previous year. I got two rings, Harbaugh’s a bitch, so it doesn’t matter.’’
Asked why he felt the 49ers signed him in the first place, Jacobs said: “I have no idea whatsoever, and they didn’t want to release me when I kept going to them with pure respect, which I usually don’t have when I’m pissed off. I kept it respectful the whole time. They just felt we really can’t use him, let’s try to suspend him. I tell you what, I got my money back and playoff and Super Bowl money. Everything. For two years in a row, I got everything.’’
Jacobs returned to the Giants after the first game of the 2013 season and had 58 rushing attempts for 238 yards and four touchdowns. He underwent knee surgery following the season and decided to retire.
“My body, man, it wasn’t responding the same any more: I’d get hurt, then I’d try to come back and play and then I get hurt again, then the hamstring started, the knee started, everything went downhill,’’ Jacobs said. “I really fought hard to get back out there, but my body just didn’t respond to injuries like it used to do. That’s when I knew it was time to call it.’’
John Harbaugh sat down with David Letterman on "The Late Show" last night and revealed that he hasn't spoken to his brother Jim since the post-game handshake after his Baltimore Ravens narrowly beat the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII Sunday night.
At the traditional midfield meeting, the winning coach lightheartedly admitted to Letterman that he told his steamed brother —who was on the short end of the 34-31 loss — "I love you."
Jim Harbaugh's last words to his victorious bro were,"Congratulations."
John joked that they haven't said a word since.
Harbaugh's chat with the late night host went along these lines:
Letterman: “Have you spoken to him since?”
Harbaugh: “I have not. We have not had a conversation since. We will – soon.”
Letterman: “Did you ever get a sense growing up that there was favoritism from one to the other? Were you the favorite? Was Jim the favorite?”
Harbaugh: “I felt like Jim was the favorite pretty much our whole [life] – I did, I did. Jim felt like he was the favorite, but the truth, Joani, our sister, she was truly the favorite. She was the little baby girl.”
Letterman: “Joani…now where does she coach?”
Letterman: “When will you talk to your brother?”
Harbaugh: “I’m hoping, you know, sometime soon. We actually, we have meetings coming up, we have a combine in two weeks."
Letterman: “Is there animosity?”
Harbaugh: “No, no. You know what there is?”
Letterman: “Is he feeling bad? Do you need to reach out to him?”
Harbaugh: “He’s playing golf today. He’s playing golf, yeah. No, there’s no consolation. There’s no way that you console your brother. Anybody that has a brother knows that. You don’t console your brother. It doesn’t work.”
Letterman: “Not having a brother, I have two sisters and it’s unlikely that any of us would have coached a Super Bowl game, so I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what this is. Do you wake up thinking, ‘Oh, thank God I beat him,’ or, ‘Oh, I won, but, oh, too bad.’ I just don’t know what that is.”
Harbaugh: “You know, you do wake up thinking, ‘Thank God I beat him.’ You do, yes. It would have been a long life, you know?”
The NFL Scouting Combines are in two weeks and John was optimistic the two brothers would have to run into each other then.
Colin Kaepernick kicked off his NFL playoff career with flying colors Saturday and — after the 49ers quarterback shredded the Packers defense for 181 yards on the ground and 263 through the air — head coach Jim Harbaugh finally had good reason to stop his hand-wringing about replacing Alex Smith with his record-setting QB.
If Harbaugh was breathing easy about making the right choice with his precocious new quarterback and the 45-31 victory, he wasn't gloating about it after the game.
As the 49ers prepare to face the winner of the Seahawks-Falcons game in the NFC Championship Game next Sunday, a solemn Harbaugh gave credit to the entire Niners squad and said it was a "great team victory" and that they "competed like maniacs," at his postgame presser.
Harbaugh is in the NFC title game for the second straight year, and it gives him a chance to meet his big brother, Ravens coach John Harbaugh, in the Super Bowl if everything falls in place.
Asked at what point he found out his brother had won his game against the Broncos, the 49ers coach tried to brush off the hypothetical question but said, "Somewhere in the first quarter, I believe...
"We want to study for the (NFC Championship Game) test," he added.
Talk about bad timing. San Francisco 49ers running back Brandon Jacobs posted advice on Twitter with a reference to never working "in a place where you hate your boss so much, you should always be happy at work." Finishing with the hash tag: "YouLiveAndYouLearn."
Jacobs would have been better off sending flowers instead of tweets, considering his boss — 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh —was hospitalized Thursday for what the team called a "minor procedure" because of an irregular heartbeat on the same day.
In the locker room at Santa Clara team headquarters soon after his post, Jacobs, the former New York Giants battering ram, said people shouldn't "assume" his remarks were football related . He followed up with more tweets saying," Have you ever been in a spot and you wonder why are you there."
Jacobs, who has been nagged most of the season with a left knee injury — but claims he is fully healthy — has been active once all season but has never got into a groove with his new team. If anyone has an axe to grind with his boss, it's the frustrated running back.
Meanwhile, the team said it anticipates Harbaugh — who had a "cardioversion" which zaps a person's heart back to normal — will be back at the 49ers facilities preparing his team for a big Monday night game against the Chicago Bears.
"Coach Harbaugh, like he always tells us, he's tougher than a two-dollar steak," said 49er Patrick Willis. "We all know he's going to be all right."
Jacobs might want to tweet Get Well Soon to his brother's boss.
New Jersey is still recovering from from the devastation left behind by Sandy but one sure sign that things are slowly getting back to normal is the sound of whining returning to the New York Giants locker room.
While the Todd Haley-schemed Steelers O-line has improved in protecting their quarterback significantly this season, the once-vaunted Giants pass rush has seen a drastic decline in sacks. Tuck only has a total of one posted on his stat sheet through eight games this season.
"There's a reason why they call him Big Ben, but he's definitely a guy that does a great job of prolonging plays," said Tuck. "Not necessarily with his feet — he's good that way, too — but you see guys get straight rushes, and he kind of sidesteps them and they kind of fall off of him, so we realize that's going to be a big obstacle for us, and we got to make sure we wrap up when we get to him."
Tuck and his fellow defensive linemen have had a lot of practice chasing around mobile quarterbacks this season. Besides the hulking Roethlisberger, the Giants have met up with shifty scramblers like Cam Newton, Tony Romo, Michael Vick and Robert Griffin III.
"It's no easy task being a Giant D-lineman this year," Tuck quipped. "We've had some different animals out there, but you got to look at it as a great challenge for us."
Sounds like it's not as much of a case of "murder" as it is larceny — like Tuck being robbed of his sacks.
The NFL entertains millions of fans every season but is sometimes about as humorous as "The View." The "No Fun League" commissioner Roger Goodell will never be confused with Louis C.K. but this week's NFL story lines seemed like they written for a few episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."
It looks like Goodell will have his hands full following the escapades of Week Six.
The week began with Miami Dolphins receiver Brandon Marshall saying he was going to play like a "maniac" against the New York Jets on Monday night. The All-Pro player tried to rally his lowly team by going as far as to announce that he was going to get thrown out of the game by the second quarter and might even punch out Jets defensemen Antonio Cromartie or Bart Scott. Goodell was surely listening.
The fun continued in the second quarter of the St. Louis Rams-Green Bay Packers game when A.J. Hawk sacked Rams QB Sam Bradford and rubbed it in by flipping the bird towards his own bench and the Packers fans in Lambeau Field.
Hawk, who might have been angry at wearing the ugly Packers throw-back uniforms or celebrating the fact that it was his first solo-sack in nearly two years, later apologized. He claimed it was a "running joke" and didn't intend for "anyone to see it." Okay. You can't make these things up folks.
The "Lambeau Flip" was ignored by the officiating crew but lambasted by the game announcers on TV and it's a good bet the Commish will be pointing his own accusing finger at the linebacker.
The bizarre episodes continued with a near cage-match between head coaches Jim Harbaugh and Jim Schwartz after an exciting game between the San Francisco 49ers and Detroit Lions. The two surprising teams exchanged six lead changes throughout the game and, during the mandatory mid-field after game handshake, Harbaugh's overenthusiastic grip and greet with a hard pat on the back riled losing coach Schwartz.
The Lions coach didn't take kindly to his exuberant counterpart and he chased Harbaugh down and started yelling at him. To paraphrase Mel Brooks: May the Schwartz be on you.
The two coaches had to be separated by staff members and the tussle got the surrounding players pumped up and a few more scuffles broke out at mid-field.
Harbaugh later accepted the blame and said, "I was really revved up. That wasn't me, I just shook his hand too hard."
It was even kind of comical-- in a Farrelly Brothers, ball-to-the-groin way-- seeing Saints head coach Sean Payton coaching from the bench in a leg brace after getting run over by his own player and breaking his knee cap. Sometimes humor hurts.
The only thing missing this week was a rant by the Sam Kinison of the NFL-- Rex Ryan. I guess three straight losses don't lead to a very funny punchline, but there's still one day to gather some material.
It looked like there was little too much frat-boy for the NFL's blood this week. Forget a finger, it's looks like Goodell will lay down his fist.
