An Ode to an Under-Appreciated Truthsayer: Kawakami Time

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The 49ers don’t just have a Seattle problem any more, now they have an Everything Problem.

But it starts with Seattle. Oh my, it all begins with Richard Sherman, Russell Wilson and Pete Carroll and every part of the 49ers’ ongoing—and expanding—Seahawks Nightmare.

Might end with Seattle, too.

The Seahawks have beaten the 49ers before, but on Thursday at Levi’s Stadium before a national TV audience, Seattle shook the 49ers to their very core.

After the 19-3 Seattle domination was over, the 49ers players were booed, Harbaugh was solemn and the 49ers’ owner himself underlined the potential intrigue ahead for this 7-5 team, now on the brink of playoff doom.

“Thank you 49ers faithful for coming out strong tonight,” owner Jed York said over his Twitter account in the last minutes of the game.

“This performance wasn’t acceptable. I apologize for that.”

Why would York issue this statement right then?

The only logical reason: York wanted to prepare 49ers fandom for major changes ahead, and let’s all assume that York’s main focus is on Harbaugh’s future.

York and general manager Trent Baalke set this up, intentionally or not, by tacitly suggesting that this was an all-or-nothing season for Harbaugh.

That inflated the conversation about Harbaugh’s future, that trickled into the locker room, that created a sense of doubt about this team if it faltered and now Seattle has opened up the divide for everyone to see.

The 49er are falling short and that probably means Harbaugh’s time with the 49ers is ticking down.

Seattle did this. Seattle, which will host the 49ers on Dec. 14 with a possible chance to stamp out the 49ers for good, exposed every weakness of the Harbaugh era and every bit of York and Baalke impatience and petulance.

And now we’re all wondering if Seattle may have all but ended the Harbaugh era on Thursday night.

The last time York used words like this, it was near the end of the 2010 season and Mike Singletary was fired a few hours later.

Asked about York’s comments immediately after the game, Harbaugh stayed away from a direct response.

“We didn’t get it done,” Harbaugh said. “The Seahawks played much better team football than we did.

“We know what we have to do now. We have to come back and win ‘em all.”

Does Harbaugh think it matters what his owner Tweets?

“I don’t know anything about the Tweet,” Harbaugh said. “What matters is what we do, how we respond as a football team.

“We’ve got to regroup, come back; we’ve got to win ‘em all.”

It’s unlikely that Harbaugh will be dismissed in the next few days, though in this tense situation with these seething personalities, you never know what might explode.

If there’s a change there’s little doubt that defensive line coach Jim Tomsula—who took over for Singletary for one game in 2010—would be the choice again, possibly permanently.

In any case, York and Baalke lingered in the 49ers locker room after the game, and team president Paraag Marathe attended Harbaugh’s postgame media session.

None of that is the usual 49ers operating procedure, and on purpose or not, 49ers management was signaling that this is crisis time.

I think there’s a strong chance York and Baalke will have a conversation with Harbaugh about the direction of the 49ers offense, which managed only 164 yards on Thursday and has struggled almost all season.

On Thursday, the 49ers couldn’t run the ball on Seattle’s defense (64 yards on 18 carries) and 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was lost all night (16 for 29 attempts for only 121 yards and two interceptions, both to Sherman).

Offensive coordinator Greg Roman has already been under fire for guiding an offense that is scoring at the lowest output of the Harbaugh era and this game was, by far, the worst one yet.

So much of what the 49ers did this offseason was to prepare the offense to beat Seattle, after losing to the Seahawks in the NFC Championship Game last January.

Harbaugh and Roman wanted to increase Kaepernick’s role, wanted more receiving weapons, and wanted to challenge Seattle’s defense in many different ways.

The result: Total offensive disarray on Thursday, with the Seahawks now rising to 8-4.

49ers management also dreamed that the move to Levi’s this season would give the team the same kind of advantage that CenturyLink Field gives the Seahawks, and that absolutely has not happened.

The loss drops the 49ers’ record at Levi’s to 3-3, and, as Harbaugh put it, now they all know that the 49ers have to win each one of their remaining four games to have a shot to make the playoffs.

And one of those games will be in Seattle. If Harbaugh makes it to that game, that one really might be the end of this, and not just symbolically.

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