All of this Hayne talk has got me giddy. I mean, it's not like we've had any good returners recently. Actually, we've had none, not since this guy.
While Ted Ginn Jr. might think he's a Wide Receiver, he's really an elite returner. There are more Wide Receivers than drops of water in the ocean. There are only a select few that are good returners. Sure he had his ups and downs, fumbling punts and getting away with muffing others, but damn was this guy fast. Once he got that 5th gear clocked in, there was no catching him.
I didn't realize how great of a returner we had until this game. This was Jim Harbaugh's (here we go talking about him again) first regular season game as 49er head coach. As was the usual trend up till now, we scored on the Seahawks, then turned around and blew the lead.
Then this happened. Twice.
And from this action a new verbiage was born: getting Ginned.
How important was Ginn? His absence in the NFC title game was felt on two muffed punts by one Kyle Steven Williams. While Williams wasn't the sole reason we lost that game, we probably wouldn't have had to worry about two muffed punts in Ginns hands. One probably, but two was out of the ordinary.
After seeing Hayne, the future really excites me. He has a long way to go and this can certainly be misleading (stay tuned for me to write up about that), but he has all the tools and athleticism to give our return game something special.At the very least if the offense is putrid again we can all get MOAR FIELD GOALS!!!!