© Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports
Joe Staley didn’t give Sunday’s 26-21 win over the Seattle Seahawks the same treatment as last year heading in, when he said, “I just want to fucking win here so bad… It just sucks to not have success here.”
He acknowledged he still very, very much would like to win there, but it was more about the reality that a win meant a No. 1 seed in the NFC and a loss meant a Wild Card game rather than a moral, or existential victory in putting the Seahawks in their place at home.
Maybe he didn’t want the same pressure put on his teammates, or just realized they didn’t feel that same, borderline obsession to not just get the figurative monkey off their back, but to give it a healthy punt into the Seattle night (the monkey representing a win in Seattle not, you know, a literal monkey).
“I think it’s a completely brand new team, and it wasn’t like any kind of past performances,” Staley said. “We’re going to dictate what we were gonna do today because all the players, the mindset that everybody has here is really different and it was exciting to see us come out and play the way we did. I could see it during practice all week, guys were very focused. We knew what we were going to have to do to win here.”
On Sunday, Staley’s teammates gave him that figurative monkey punt in the most apropos way possible. With Marshawn Lynch making a cameo and Russell Wilson doing that thing that feels inevitable where no lead is safe, and he slowly, but relentlessly pulls his way back, it seemed like the Seahawks were going to do it again.
A game in which they had no business winning, they would simply find a way. And they nearly did, and maybe would have, if not for a delay of game penalty and a game-winning tackle from Dre Greenlaw that was a couple inches in the 49ers’ favor, in opposite fashion of their loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
And there it was. For the first time since December 24, 2011, the 49ers had won a game in Seattle. They had secured a revolution from a 4-12 bottom-feeder to the top of the NFC at 13-3.
Five-straight seasons without a playoff berth, and for Staley, it was another four years without a playoff berth that preceded his three-year playoff window. He’s back now.
So Staley cried. Albeit, he said, for about five seconds, but the tears came.
“It just kind of hit me like a wave, I don’t know,” Staley said. “I think it was just being a part of this franchise for so long and playing here and not winning. And having a game here where everything was on the line for the regular season and the regular season title. It just felt good. It was a crazy emotional game. I mean it was crazy, it took everything. I’m kind of emotionally drained, it just felt good at the end to come away with one more play. And, you know lasted for like five seconds.”
He wouldn’t have it any other way. What fun is success without the pain that precedes it?
“I like to ride rollercoasters,” Staley said. “It builds character.”
His teammates know all about Staley’s rollercoaster ride, and maybe they prefer not to ride their own version of it. While they don’t have the same pool of Seattle-based pain to draw from, they recognized that aside from the playoff implications, there were people in the organization, Staley in particular, who would very much appreciate a reprieve from the routine of disappointment in Seattle.
“I know it means so much to guys like Joe Staley who have been here forever, and this coaching staff who have been through so much in such a short period of time” said Fred Warner.
But Staley’s happy that those young guys like Warner and Greenlaw don’t have those brutal memories. There was no boogeyman to overcome, no inferiority complex; just an exhausting football game to give the 49ers a massively improved chance of making the Super Bowl.
“It’s always good to not have baggage and scars,” Staley said. “Because sometimes they are painful.”