any given Saturday that year. •••
Do you think the BCS should go to a playoff sys- tem? Not a full playoff. The bowl system is really special about college football. Being able to go to a bowl game; that’s something unique to college football that I really like. They need to find a balance between keeping the bowl system but having four teams who played in bowl games earlier play for the national championship later. Some kind of plus two, plus four system where you’re still keeping the bowls around but also letting the top two teams battle it out. •••
How much pressure did you feel getting drafted No. 1 overall at the age of 20? You have high standards for yourself. You work extremely hard to point toward those standards, but when you’re
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the number one pick, I found myself constantly trying to prove myself and justify the pick with every play. I felt like with every single play I had to justify the pick and that I deserved to be number one. And that’s hard to do every single play. I constantly found myself trying too hard to do things instead of just letting those plays come to me and just doing my job. I really found myself forcing the issue and got myself in trouble as a younger player. •••
How frustrating was it for you to go through five offensive coordinators in your first five years in the league? It was definitely frustrating, especially that early. You finally find your- self getting comfortable and it happens again and you feel yourself getting comfortable and then it happens again.
Part of it is the nature of the game, but obviously as a young quarterback if you go out there this time of year with the same system, it’s a lot better. [Otherwise] you do just enough to get by, you never get really, really good and to an advanced level and become proficient at some- thing because then you’re changing and you’re learn- ing a whole new playbook, starting from scratch again, you’ve got to press delete on the old stuff. You get through the season and then it happens again. It’s tough being a young quarterback but I got exposed to a lot of great minds. I tried to take things from all of them and learn from all the coaches. ••• Talk about your relationship with Coach Harbaugh and how he turned the franchise around. He did a great job with the team with two
things. One, he put the focus back on football. That might sound weird but in the NFL there are so many distrac- tions, there are so many things going on. It is a busi- ness. But he did a really great job of walking a fine line and really putting the focus back on just playing ball and that’s all that’s important. The rest of the stuff can wait or it will take care of itself. He created selflessness amongst the team, really team first. It wasn’t that he just talked about these things, he re- ally led by example. The team-first mentality is that no one’s bigger than the team, himself included, and we’re all going to do what’s best for the team. It really rubbed off and the guys bought into it. ••• You led the 49ers to the NFC Championship Game last season. In your mind, what does this team need to do in order to win a Super Bowl? Last year was a great year. We did some good things and got so close, but now that’s over. Each NFL year is its own entity. We’ve got to go fight for everything all over and re- prove ourselves, re-commit ourselves. We’re all starting from scratch and have to put in the work. Offensively especially, we have a lot of things to get better on. We did some good things, but situational football— third down, red zone, two minute, short yardage, goal line areas—we really need to improve on. If you look at last year’s tapes we left a lot out there. Overall, we need to get better at executing. You’re constantly trying to reach perfection. I don’t think anyone ever reaches it but you’re trying to get as close as you can.
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