This is the first game where the Niners will be facing Greg Williams (the man responsible for bountygate) or his defense. And in case those with short memories have forgotten, the scandal involved the Niner players, players who are still on the team and probably recall (better than we do) what Williams instructed his players to do:
Williams uses one of his favorite slogans in the speech: "Kill the head and the body will die."
On Gore: "We've got to do everything in the world to make sure we kill Frank Gore's head. We want him running sideways. We want his head sideways."
On running back Kendall Hunter: "Little 32, we're going to knock the f--- out of him."
On Smith: "Every single one of you, before you get off the pile, affect the head. Early, affect the head. Continue, touch and hit the head."
On Kyle Williams: "We need to find out in the first two series of the game, that little wide receiver, No. 10, about his concussion. We need to f------ put a lick on him right now. He needs to decide. He needs to f------ decide."
On Crabtree: "We need to decide whether Crabtree wants to be a fake-ass prima donna, or he wants to be a tough guy. We need to find out. He becomes human when we f------ take out that outside ACL."
On Davis: "We need to decide how many times we can bull rush and and we can f------ put Vernon Davis' ankles over the pile."
Fast forward to this week. In his presser Greg Roman said the following:
"Afternoon. We've got a division game against the Rams. We know them well, they know us. [Rams defensive coordinator] Gregg Williams is back there as the d-coordinator. We have a lot of respect for him. He's doing a great job with that defense.”
So Roman starts his presser by mentioning Williams and then saying “we respect him a lot.” Do we really believe that? Translation: “We recall what Williams tried to do to our players and you better believe we will use all of that as motivation in this week’s game.”
You don’t mess with a man’s livelihood in athletics (and I’ve written about this in the NBA forum). This happened twice last year in the NBA (Houston Rockets vs OKC and Bobcats vs Heat) and both times the team that doled out the injury or attempt at injury got destroyed in the next game. This is real revenge people, not the manufactured one that is created by coaches when a team plays an opponent they recently lost to. Normally, you get revenge on the team/person responsible but in this case that person (the leader) is with a different team. Still, I don’t think the Niners have forgotten, and this is their chance at revenge, which is why I doubled my bet today on the Niners. Good luck.