49ers camp report: Counting on Gore to end running joke

SANTA CLARA, Cal. -- The San Francisco 49ers finally named a starting quarterback, with Shaun Hill getting the call. But it doesn’t matter who quarterbacks the club this season -- Hill or Alex Smith -- he acts as a co-pilot, charged with getting the football into the hands of the team’s best offensive weapon.

That would be running back Frank Gore, and it is he -- not Hill or Smith -- who determines if the 49ers finally get off the mat.

"He is the bell cow," offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye said of Gore. "And he's the guy we have to play off of."
Makes sense to me. You try to win with your playmakers, and Gore is the best one on the 49ers' offense. Some people might say he's the only one, which is why the club was so hot for wide receiver Michael Crabtree. All I know is there is no way you can overstate the importance of Gore to what the 49ers will do on offense.

He runs. He catches. And he can find the end zone without a compass.

San Francisco hasn't experienced a winning season since 2002, and that's so long ago that only three players are left from the club. But there is optimism galore this year partly because Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary is the head coach, partly because the club plays in one of the NFL's weakest divisions and mostly because Gore is in the best shape of his career.

I know, you hear that about someone at every camp, but you have to trust me on this one: Frank Gore looks faster, sharper and quicker than he has in the past. According to Gore, that is the product of a rigorous offseason conditioning program at his alma mater, the University of Miami, with Gore determined to make himself into the player he was in 2006 when he ran for a career-best 1,695 yards.

He trained with former Hurricanes Andre Johnson, D.J. Williams, Jonathan Vilma, Santana Moss and Roscoe Parrish, and he gained the results he wanted.

"I just felt I needed it," he said of the work. "If I could go against people who were faster and quicker than me and keep up or beat them, I felt I was doing a pretty good job."

Now it's the 49ers who stand to benefit. For all the talk about the quarterbacks -- Hill, last year's starter, appears to be the front-runner -- it is Gore who should make San Francisco's offense go. Raye, the club's fifth offensive coordinator the past five years, stresses physical, mistake-free play, with an effective rushing attack -- OK, Frank Gore -- the lynchpin of the program.

Judging from what I heard and observed, I would expect Gore to touch the ball an average of 20-25 times a game, accumulate close to 2,000 yards in offense and try to hoist the 49ers on his shoulders. That won't be easy, given the recent history of the club, but he will have help. Tight end Vernon Davis, who was virtually ignored last year, is the first candidate that comes to mind.

In the end, though, everything comes back to Gore. He touches the ball more at practice than anyone on offense other than Hill and Smith, and why not? He has the keys to the ignition, and the 49ers don't go anywhere without looking to him first.

"He's going to be the guy," said Smith, back at quarterback after missing last season. "He's going to be the focal point of [the offense] because when we're running the ball well so much is going to come off of it."

Let's start with the running itself. A year ago the 49ers ranked 27th in rushing under coordinator Mike Martz, and threw or tried to throw 167 times more than they ran. That will change. Singletary and Raye are old school in their offensive approaches, with Singletary determined to win by beating down opponents, not out-finessing them.

"When we have a big back like Frank Gore and a big offensive line," Singletary said, "you want to be able to run the football; you want to be able to have a physical presence. The message we want to send is that we're going to be a physical football team, and we're coming. We're coming downhill."

That's pretty straightforward, and defensive tackles on the 49ers' schedule are advised to pack the Advil. When Singletary said his team is "coming downhill," he means he plans to point Gore at the middle of the defensive line and hammer away until he finds a hole.

The strategy is a sound one ... provided, of course, it works. First of all, it would force opponents to stack the box and open holes in the secondary. Second, it would allow the 49ers to throw off play-action. Third, it would bring Davis -- a potential weapon -- back into play. Fourth, it would protect quarterbacks who were sacked a league-high 55 times a year ago. Last, it might, just might, minimize the turnovers that crippled the team in 2008 when the 49ers had a league-high 35 giveaways.

"We have to be able to execute," said Singletary, who coached the Niners to victory in four of the final five games of 2008. "But I don't want to come across as, 'We're going to be three yards and a cloud of dust,' either. There has to be a balance as we go forward.

"When I say I want our football [team] to be physical, I think right away everyone thinks, 'Man, he wants to run the football.' But I mean physical when we're passing the football, as well. If you don't have the football I want to see you go and hit somebody. I think that's important for us to understand. The physicality is both on running and passing the football."

Seeing is believing, and Singletary hammers the message into his players daily with practices that feature pads and bone-rattling collisions. At one point this summer, he ran three straight days of nutcracker drills, and tell me the last time you heard of something like that happening with the San Francisco 49ers.

Gore explained that "it's all a mind thing," meaning that Singletary wants his players to be as tough mentally as they are physically. And maybe he's right. All I know is the 49ers are vastly different all the way around this season, starting with their approach to offense. Remember when the quarterback was the focal point of this team? Not anymore. Fantasy Football fanatics, you better move Frank Gore up on your boards.

"If people watch game film, watch behind [the line of scrimmage] and see the blocking and running and catching I do, they will be amazed," said Gore. "I want it to get back to when [people] talk about football and talk about a running back, my name will be the first guy.

"The thing I want to do more than anything is win, man, and the better I do the better the offense does. And the better the offense does the team does. The better Shaun does and the better Alex does, the better the receivers do. Once all of us get on one page it's going to be really hard to stop us."



(cbssports.com)