Official Funeral for the 2009 49ers Season...

(Tombstone created from these original images: 1 2.)

Now that the 49ers playoffs hopes are officially dead thanks to a 27-13 loss to the Eagles coupled with a 34-27 win by the Cardinals over Detroit, it's time to remember, forget, and move on.  For assistance, here's the Kübler-Ross model, otherwise known as the five stages of grief, which describes a process consisting of five steps in which people deal with grief and tragedy: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  Let's go through them one by one:


Denial: No! The 49ers will still win the Super Bowl!  Yeah!!! I believe!!! The Cardinals will get disqualified for steroid use and we'll win the NFC West!! SMITH WILL THROW 50 TDs IN THE PLAYOFFS!!  IT'S NOT OVER YET!!


Anger: WHY US??? What did we do wrong?? We believed as hard as we possibly could!  Singletary was supposed to be the answer! FIRE THEM ALL! OVERHAUL THE TEAM! BURN SMITH AT A STAKE!! *angry rant*


Bargaining: Nooooo..... let us take away one bad play, please please please please! Overrule Favre's last minute touchdown pass or Addai's touchdown pass! We'd be 7-7 and our playoff hopes would still be alive! Come on NFL, find a mistake somewhere and overturn a game for us!

Depression: What's the point of trying?  We're always gonna lose.. we suck... the 49ers will always suck.  The glory years of Montana and Young are long gone and they're never coming back.  Alex Smith sucks.  Our entire team sucks.  The Bay Area is doomed forever.. let's just give up hope... we're just gonna suck every year anyway.  There's no point in believing...

Acceptance: Okay, it's finally over.  Let's try to salvage the rest of the season.  The 49ers have the Rams and the Lions left and both games are very winnable.  Finishing 8-8 would be a big step forward and give us something to build on next year.  A few good picks and a better offensive line and who knows?  It could be us sitting on top of the football world in a year or two.


Well, we're all probably still miserable, but oh well, what can you do about it? At least the Sharks are still doing okay: Evgeni Nabokov was the hero again, stopping 45 of 47 shots, as the Sharks beat the Chicago Blackhawks tonight by a score of 3-2 in Chicago, despite being outshot 3:1.  Hopefully, they can keep us distracted and entertained until baseball season....


And of course, what could cheer us up more than a Tom Brady interception?