The San Francisco 49ers are going into 2018 with more hype than they’ve had in some time, but one person who has remembered both the good and bad is Joe Staley. He and Mike McGlinchey found themselves on the Pardon My Take podcast with a hilarious conversation about just how ridiculous pieces of Staley’s tenure may have been.
Naturally, Jim Harbaugh had to come up, and Staley has some stories, like how many snaps Harbaugh took as the head coach during practice or how Harbaugh would find a funny story not funny, but then laugh after the punchline moments later.
But with Harbaugh, the 49ers losing result at Super Bowl 47 had to come up. Staley shares the fans’ pain with the final moments of Super Bowl 47, which at least gave me some closure.
“We came back, we made an epic comeback in the second half. We have all the momentum going, we feel like we’re doing what we want on offense, and we have that final drive. Started that drive with four minutes left. Get down, first and goal from the seven yard line. Two minute warning, I’m sitting there in the huddle looking around at everyone like, ‘Dude, we’re going to have a [site decorum] parade. We’re about to be screaming our [site decorum] names, down [site decorum] Market Street. We’re about the win the Super Bowl, can you believe this?’ Because we had the best offensive line in the 2012 year. Our offensive line was rolling that year. We had Mike Iupati, Jonathan Goodwin, Alex Boone, Anthony Davis. We felt like we were just going to call four straight run plays and get into the endzone from the seven yard line. And we went on to run one run play...and then threw three fade routes to Crabtree. I still shudder when I hear that playcall, ‘Q8.’”
As an armchair coach, you have to wonder what the 49ers were thinking in the final plays of Super Bowl 47—especially the coaches. Turns out, the players were wondering the same thing with that blunder. If anything, this interview gives me some closure.
This is probably the most random of conversations, but there is a lot of good stuff in there, especially when Staley starts listing off all the coaches he played for (that starts at 40:42). It’s worth a watch, especially if you want a laugh.
The interview starts at the 36:00 mark