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Thursday, February 16, 2012

Giants vs. 49ers: Kyle Williams receives death threats after overtime fumble

For every playoff hero, there is goat, and Sunday’s AFC and NFC championship games followed the script.

In Baltimore’s 23-20 loss to New England, you could take your pick of goats between Lee Evans, who dropped the go-ahead touchdown, and Billy Cundiff, who shanked the game-tying 32-yard field goal attempt.

But after his San Francisco 49ers fell to the New York Giants, 20-17 in overtime last night, punt returner Kyle Williams had it just as bad. The 23-year-old had to swallow a pair of costly punt handling miscues — the second of which resulted in New York’s game-winning field goal.

Several 49ers players were quick to rally around their devastated teammate, but some fans were not as forgiving. In the immediate aftermath of Lawrence Tynes’ game-winning field goal, Williams began receiving death threats on the Internet.

Williams was bombarded with vicious comments on Twitter, with angry fans writing they hope his family dies or that his car gets bombed. (The San Jose Mercury News has a full list here.)

The first mistake came early in the fourth quarter when Williams hesitated before getting out of the way of a bouncing punt. The ball nicked his knee and New York’s Devin Thomas recovered, setting up the Giants’ only second-half score.

The second miscue came in overtime, when Jacquian Williams punched the ball out of Williams’s grasp to give the Giants the field position they needed to put the game away. In all, the unfortunate bounce and the fumble directly led to 10 of New York’s 20 points.

“You hate to be the last guy that had the ball, to give it up that way in that fashion and to lose a game of this magnitude,” Williams said. “But it is what it is, and we’re going to move forward as a team.”

His San Francisco teammates agreed.

“The game didn’t come down to Kyle Williams — it never did,” 49ers lineman Ricky Jean Francois said. “We could’ve ended that game many times.”

@KyleWilliams_10 keep ur head up. U r my brother n teammate N I would put u back there all over again. We all lost this game tonight not u.
— Patrick willis (@PatrickWillis52) January 23, 2012

I didn't think this would happen but ppl need to get a grip! Leave Kyle alone! We win and lose as a team. Not from one person or play.
— David Akers (@DavidAkers2) January 23, 2012

More NFL playoffs coverage from Washington Post Sports:

Giants beat 49ers 20-17 in overtime to advance to Super Bowl

Hamilton: NBC lucks out with Tom vs. Eli Super Bowl matchup

Mike Wise: Cundiff’s missed field goal is a horrible end to a game that had everything

Lee Evans shoulders the blame for Ravens’ loss after dropping go-ahead TD

Patriots are early 3-point favorites for Super Bowl

Early Lead: Who will win Super Bowl XLVI?

View the original article here

Sunday, February 5, 2012

NFL playoffs 2012: For 49ers Vernon Davis, it’s about the team again

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An ex-Redskin finds a new life with 49ers

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Capitals endure another shutout

Wizards can’t keep up frenetic pace

NFL playoffs 2012: For 49ers Vernon Davis, it’s about the team again

Beck Diefenbach/Reuters - Vernon Davis catches the game-winning touchdown, evoking shades of Terrell Owens circa 1998, as the 49ers shock the Saints in last Sunday’s divisional playoff game at Candlestick Park.

Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By Barry Svrluga,

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – What the moment meant was apparent on Vernon Davis’s face, because when he caught that pass last Saturday – a franchise-changing, career-altering, season-sustaining play – the tears came and came quickly, running down his face for all to see. He rushed into the arms of his coach, Jim Harbaugh, as if – at 27, with the musculature of a fine sculpture — Davis needed a nurturing hug, a shoulder to cry on. He found Harbaugh’s shoulder, buried his head, and wept some more.

“It’s something I’ve been dreaming about my whole life,” he said days later, and that’s true. But it was not all.

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Davis is not one of those athletes who has been through what amount to trials and tribulations for millionaires – benched, sent to the locker room, the subject of a coach’s tirade – and says, “I was misunderstood.” Rather, his self-assessment is this: I was who I appeared to be — petulant and self-centered and everything you thought.

“When I first got here, it was all about what Vernon wanted,” Davis said here Thursday, three days before his San Francisco 49ers were set to host the New York Giants for the right to go to Super Bowl XLVI, an opportunity Davis provided with his game-winning touchdown catch against New Orleans last weekend. “It was all about me, what I wanted, achieving my goals instead of worrying about what the team wanted. And today, as we sit here, to me it’s all about the team. It’s all about the team.”

So he cried for the 49ers, who return to the NFC title game for the first time since 1998 in no small part because Davis caught seven balls for 180 yards and two scores in that wild 36-32 NFC divisional playoff win over the Saints. He cried for Harbaugh, the first-year coach who helped get them there. He cried for his grandmother, Adaline, who raised him and his six siblings in a small house off Georgia Ave. NW in the District, one woman doing the work of many.

But he cried, too, for Mike Singletary, because the YouTube moment that has defined Davis’s career to this point actually was the one that turned it around. The public humiliation of that scene – when Singletary, then in his first game as San Francisco’s head coach, yanked Davis from the game after a penalty, sent him to the locker room, and publicly upbraided him afterward – went into those tears last week.

“He helped me,” Davis said. “It made me open my eyes. When it happened, I was like, ‘Maybe it’s not all about me. Maybe it’s not about what I want.’”

What Davis wanted, growing up in the Petworth neighborhood of Northwest, was the moment he had against the Saints. With 14 seconds left, the 49ers trailed by three, but had the ball at New Orleans’s 14 yard line. Davis charged off the line of scrimmage.

“All the friends here, we talked about it,” Adaline Davis said last week, invoking Davis’s childhood nickname. “We said, ‘If “Duke” wins that game, he’s going to cry.’”

“It touched his heart,” said his brother Vontae, a cornerback for the Miami Dolphins. “It was meant to be.”

‘The Good Lord will always provide’

When Vernon Davis used to head out into the streets as a kid, up to Truesdale Elementary School for a game they called “throwback” – essentially hurling a football into the air, then trying to tackle the kid who came up with it – his situation was different, Petworth was different. He never really had a relationship with his mother; his relationship with his father to this day consists of occasional visits back in Washington, but not much more. Adaline Davis – left to raise Davis and his siblings as their mother battled a drug problem – provided what she could, cleaning houses.

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