After the game, Rice said this was the hardest part of the endeavor for the Ravens. “The offense was sitting for an hour, an hour or more – for 30 minutes at halftime and then Jacoby took it back and the power went out for another 30 minutes. I know I was stiff when I went back out there.”
Two plays after the 34-minute delay, the 49ers were forced to punt and the Ravens went three and out on their first possession.
Kaepernick got the ball at the 20 and began to back the Ravens up on the next drive, scrambling for yards and finding Vernon Davis for 18 yards before a 31-yard TD pass to Michael Crabtree, where he literally bounced off both Cary Williams and Bernard Pollard, who missed what should’ve been easy tackles in the red zone at the 15. Instead Crabtree darted in and it was 28-13 with 7:28 remaining in the third quarter.
“That reflects on all of us – not one or two people,” Reed told his troops on sideline. “The whole defense. Chill out. That ain’t nothing. We gave it to them, alright.”
The next Ravens possession was abysmal. Flacco missed Boldin long. Pierce got stacked up, and then Flacco was sacked by extra pressure on the backside by Ahmad Brooks, and Koch was once again punting the ball away.
You could feel the momentum in the building shift after the long blackout. In the 34 minutes without air conditioning, you could feel the building heat up. And the 49ers fans were awakened and the Ravens fans came to life on defense. The building started to simmer with championship energy.
Punting from his 9, Koch hit knuckleball that Ted Ginn fielded on the right side and then turned inside and it was clear the Ravens had over-pursued. Ginn made them pay, racing away until Koch shoved him out of the bounds at the 20. Kaepernick hit Davis for a 14-yard pickup and Frank Gore went six yards for another San Francisco touchdown and it was 28-20 with 5:05 left in the third quarter.
8
The Ravens’ lead had evaporated, and quicker than anyone could’ve imagined. Adding injury to the insult, Ngata went down on the Gore run with a left leg injury and his return was listed as doubtful.
It would only get worse for the Ravens as momentum made a cruel shift and the Niners were making their own breaks. Ray Rice caught a swing pass from Flacco, tucked the ball and then had it punched out by Tarell Brown, who fell on it giving San Francisco possession at the 24. The Niners were forced to settle for a field goal, but Akers took a bad cut on a 39-yard attempt and went wide left. Ravens cornerback Chykie Brown was called for running into Akers, who proved to have some thespian ability on the play, selling what became a three-point flag. Akers hit his next chance from 34 yards, and it was 28-23, and the Ravens continued to bleed points – the offense stumbling and the defense cracking, little by little.
Flacco connected with Boldin on a sideline pass where the veteran ran angry through the arm tackling of Culliver, who he slapped aside while picking up 30 yards after literally carrying the cornerback down the field.
After the game, Flacco called Boldin “a beast out there,” and that play epitomized the effort of Boldin, who had been in a game like this before in Tampa with a title on the line.
Boldin knew all about the value of a great effort from a wide receiver from the perspective of a quarterback. Boldin was a star quarterback in high school, being named Mr. Florida at Pahokee High School in the swamps of the central part of the state in 1998. Teammate Pernell McPhee also hailed from Pahokee, next to Lake Okeechobee and a lot of alligators. Boldin went to Florida State where head coach Bobby Bowden made him a wide receiver, and he blossomed into a second-round pick of the Arizona Cardinals in 2003. He played seven seasons in Phoenix and came one play away from winning Super Bowl XLIII while with the Cardinals in 2009.
