Typically, San Francisco 49ers fans do not enjoy their team being compared to the Oakland Raiders or their fans, and the vice is very versa indeed. They don’t mind the odd hate-o-gram lobbed across the Dumbarton here and there, but the assumption is always that the other team is unworthy to share a sentence with your team.
But given the Raiders’ new cratering and Jon Gruden’s willingness to dig even further toward the earth’s core just to prove a point, the 49ers are now officially playing with the casino’s money in that one narrow area – making the fans feel good.
Or less bad, if you must.
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Thus, tonight’s game in Green Bay, while it doesn’t figure to be a funfest for the visitors or their cabal of true believers, still has that underutilized but still very important feature.
At least it won’t be watching the Raiders.
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As bars go, this is among the lowest to clear, but let’s not forget that the 49ers are playing with a backup quarterback and second lead running back, and are dotted with injuries elsewhere, and also have a porous defense and a future that has been deferred by the fact that rebuilds do not usually make themselves.
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Plus, Green Bay has Aaron Rodgers, even if gimpy, and Lambeau Field is still a tough place to play, and the idea that the 49ers have merely been reduced to network toy as its string of nationally televised games will be reduced as their relative watchability ranking decreases is beginning to irk the employees from Kyle Shanahan on down.
But at least they’re not the Raiders, which means their fans aren't watching the Raiders.
See, the Raiders as players know they are all short-timers in Gruden’s grand plan. All football players know they are short-timers in any grand plan, of course, because there is no grand plan beyond everyone gets hurt and old, and faster than they realize. But the Raiders really know it, because Gruden all but says it on a daily basis. That is an serious attitude-changer, and not for the better. This, therefore, is only going to get worse.
The 49ers, on the other hand, began their rebuild when Shanahan and general manager John Lynch came in a year ago, so there are least some players who see themselves at the start of a new era, wherever that might lead. Even if they don’t verbalize it, they too can say “at least they’re not the Raiders.”
Part of this is the power of the alibi. Jimmy Garoppolo and Jerick McKinnon going down right away changed the discussable points immediately, and 49er fans who might otherwise have been grinding through the agonies and ecstasies of the 8-8 season can now relax and accept that this season won’t be a lot more rewarding than last year’s.
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Indeed, Garoppolo fueled an unrealistic level of anticipation based on a small sample size that hid the team’s other deficiencies, most importantly on the defensive side. If tackling is an issue, your offense better be Kansas City’s.
But this isn’t about 49er fans being fooled as much as it is being more relaxed. They already have the advantage of knowing their team isn’t leaving town, which frankly is unfair to Raider fans who have done nothing but give love and money to a team that has returned nothing and is closing with crossed middle fingers on the logo.
But now they can enjoy and endure the rebuild in relative peace because, in the end, and we hate to belabor the point here, at least they’re not the Raiders.
That said, 49er fans should, out of basic human decency, not rub this in with their Raider fan friends. The Raider cabals have done nothing to earn what they are getting now, so the right thing for a 49er fan to do is just not to bring it up at all. Nothing is worse than responding to your neighbor who just had his or her car vandalized by saying, “That’s weird because we just bought a new Lexus. Funny old world, eh?”
So be sympathetic, and silent, and satisfied in the knowledge that, yes, you have a new mantra, just as the 49ers themselves do.
At least they’re not . . . oh, you know. No reason to beat it into the ground. They’re already getting a lot of that from their own.