Kevin, as much as I have carried the palm for Lord Fangio since he materialized in 2011, I concluded after watching last night's game that the defense's extaordinary, shutdown defense against the run last year (2011) was to a large extent the legacy of the previous coaching regime. It's the only reason I can explain why the defense deteriorated so much against running plays this season, even though the front seven was one year more experienced, cohesive, whatever.

I heard some pundit last night talk about how Patrick Willis had benefited from the overall improvement in the defense in 2012 to the extent that he was able to stay within his "official" assignment this season rather than taking the kinds of chances he had in previous years. But it's that sideline-to-sideline pursuit that he provided and that characterized those two great years of run defense that I missed this year. Used to be that opposing rushers could only go sideways against the 49ers. Not so this season.

Oh and one last thing...I promised myself I wouldn't introduce this topic into the post-mortem conversation, but one of the areas where Alex Smith was significantly better than Kaepernick was in completing passes into the endzone. A recent improvement, sure, but one that might have made a slight positive difference last night. Not bagging on K, because he should continue to get better and zoom up to that vaunted ceiling of his, but really, we should not overlook the element of inexperience that was in evidence in the game, regardless of all the lovely plays that succeeded.

Oh, and always be suspicious when I say "one last thing"...but speaking of post mortems, I really enjoyed coming across this report on the discovery and identification of the skeleton of Richard III by archaeologists at one my old alma maters. I hated the city of Leicester as a place to live, but its university has/had a great tradition of scientific excellence and the area around it is stuffed with interesting history.

A horse, a horse!