Baalke's fall from grace; patience pays off for McKenzie

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Remember when Trent Baalke was a genius and Reggie McKenzie was an idiot? Of course you do. Hell, Baalke and McKenzie remember -– clear as day itself.

Baalke started with Jim Harbaugh in 2011, inheriting a promising but woefully underperforming and minimally coached and maximally discouraged team. McKenzie arrived a year later to a team that made the 49ers look like the New England Patriots.

But here’s the difference. Baalke and Harbaugh benefited from that secretly rich roster, sharpened and shaped it to their needs and philosophies, and the 49ers went zero to hero in a single year. And McKenzie was saddled with a bad team, a powerless, hesitant and almost decrepit front office, and a team with next to nothing worth saving.

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Three and a half years later, the Raiders are up and coming, and the 49ers are . . . well, let’s face it, they’re the Raiders.

Oakland is now a solid operation with a consistent playing and talent philosophy. It took three years of ardent shoveling, a glorious series of smart draft choices starting with quarterback Derek Carr, and a level of patience that frankly they deserved given the level of ossification left when Al Davis passed.

And in that time, McKenzie was routinely savaged for everything he did, didn’t do, and took his time getting to doing. He caught the hell that Baalke is catching now, and then some.

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The 49ers never had to be patient, and now that the wheels are fully off and the spare has fallen out the trunk, they get to be the Raiders of 2012. And Baalke is ordering off the menu McKenzie was given three years ago -– everything is highly sugared but still tasteless and nutrition-free.

Give in to your nausea if you are a 49er fan. Shake your fist in rage if you are a Raider fan. But truth is truth -– McKenzie started at ground less than zero (courtesy Elvis Costello), and Baalke is there now (courtesy Morgan Freeman).

In fairness, the 49ers of 2011 were centered by someone who never will get sufficient credit for his contributions -– Justin Smith. He was the nucleus of a defense that, with Patrick Willis guiding the linebacking corps and a secondary of changing but hard-hitting parts, allowed opponents to know what no fun means in a football context.

The Raiders, on the other hand, have found their quarterback in Carr, a quality wide receiver in Amari Cooper, and a coach in Jack Del Rio who can be as willful as Harbaugh was, only with smoother edges, which people who have known Del Rio from his high school days would find stupefying.

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In short, the Raiders are 4-3 on merit, especially after Sunday’s 34-20 win over the injury-ravaged New York Jets. The 49ers are 2-6 after Sunday’s 27-6 loss at St. Louis, with a franchise-worst offense and weekly leaks about who is mad at whom and why the people in charge don’t seem like they are in charge at all.

And all this era of good feeling in Oakland is happening while the team is teetering on the precipice of Southern California. The 49ers, who are relocating nowhere, are also going nowhere, and people are angrier now than they ever were at John York and Terry Donahue.

In sum, Reggie McKenzie is a genius, and Trent Baalke is an idiot, only three years after Trent Baalke was a genius and Reggie McKenzie was an idiot. That’s how it works in Short Attention Span America –- the patient and careful man is appreciated far too late, but the man who starts fast and showy has a much more painful fall.

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