Sunday brought the rational end of the 2020 football season in the extended and ephemeral Bay Area, and frankly, not a moment too soon.
Now before we go too much further, hats off and well done to San Jose State for grinding through its third winning record of the century and to date only unbeaten season in school history. It still has the Mountain West Championship against Boise State and then a projected trip to either the First Responder Bowl, the Idaho Potato Bowl or the Arizona Bowl. You have to want to see those, given that Mississippi State at 2-8 is also projected to go to a bowl game, thus devaluing the whole enterprise. Also, Stanford has one more game, against UCLA, and the winner might get a bowl invite as well, though the honorable thing would be to let it go like Pitt, Boston College and Virginia and give the players the holidays off to relocate their lives.
As for the NFL, well, the 49ers have now lost two of their three games against the hideous NFC East, including Sunday's loss to a Washington team that scored no offensive touchdowns in a 23-15 victory. They're done, and the season has moved from "Maybe we can get Jim Garoppolo and George Kittle back" to "Why would we bother?" At 5-8, their historical chances of making the postseason are now 179-1, which is to say not any worse than a week ago. It's just that now, everyone has pretty much seen enough of what this team has to offer. It has barely endured its year-after-the-Super-Bowl hangover and have nothing to live for except the upcoming draft, if that's your idea of a good time, which it shouldn't be,
As for the Raiders, who are still the Bay Area's in spirit, they got beat by Indianapolis at home, and allowed enough points to the Colts to get defensive coordinator Paul Guenther fired. The team that fixed Derek Carr and made him a second-level quarterback talent not only worth keeping but protecting still didn't fix him enough to overcome giving up 30 points a game, and their playoff chances, while galactically better than San Francisco's, still deserve to be nil for all the interest they have provided.
In other words, the football that was supposed to save us from the ennui of COVID's second wave actually didn't. Our proud front-running tradition –– give us a winner or get out of our driveway –– has been reinforced, as San Francisco's injuries and Las Vegas' perpetual defensive problems have stomped out almost all hope. The web site FiveThirtyEight.com has San Francisco's playoff chances at nine percent, which is unreasonably generous, and the Raiders' at 21, which is only useful if they beat the Chargers, Dolphins and Broncos. If they win only two of three, it effectively ends.
Good, too, because that frees up more head space for whatever passes for NBA season. The Warriors start in eight days, and that little exercise in rousing the old ghosts ought to keep fans involved until the season break in March. Then comes baseball, more or less, and then you can resume your illusions about the NFL and college football.
Just call 2020 a loss leader and go about your day. Don't linger on it too long. It'll make think about replacing the milk in your corn flakes with cheap brandy, and that's a breakfast only the lost and lonely can enjoy.
