Patrick Willis: We're On A Mission

The 49ers defensive unit has numerous leaders, and I'd imagine many of them were approached by the media following the 49ers monster win over the Packers. I flipped over to NBC to catch the end of Football Night in America and they had cut to one of their reporters talking to Patrick Willis. In that interview, he dropped this gem of a quote

Man, you don't know how happy I am. This is crazy. People thought they was gonna beat us by all these touchdowns, this and that. But I don't know who they think we are. We're on a mission. We on a mission. We cut it short last year and we're just continue to work every day, work hard

If you missed it, with the first sentence he had a bit of a smile, but not a relieved to win or ecstatic to win smile. Rather, it seemed like a smile of satisfaction. A smile of "I told you so." The smile went away after that first sentence and he was all business. It wasn't that fake glare type crap we see from some big-talkers around the league. You could say it almost an emotion-less, business-like response.

There is still a lot of football to be played. Bad things can still happen. But after one game, the business-like approach seems evident. The team got hosed by some bad calls (and benefited from some bad calls), but while Harbaugh made sure the refs knew he was unhappy, the players never really seemed to let it visibly get under their skin. That's the kind of business-like approach that yields results.

Simply put, it's new Orleans or bust. A lot can happen along the way, but for the players on this team, anything short of Lombardi No. 6 would seem to be a heavy disappointment.