There was a lot of talk about Sunday’s Giants-49ers game being a rematch of the NFC Championship Game last week, a topic of conversation that safety Donte Whitner thinks the 49ers let get too deep into their heads.
"(We) possibly got too high,” Whitner said, via Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle. “A lot of people talking about redemption and this and that. Really, it’s game six of a 16-game schedule. We possibly set ourselves up for that.
The Giants rolled over the 49ers 26-3 in a performance that will make it harder for Tom Coughlin to keep playing the “Nobody believes in us” card. It will be just as hard for the 49ers to feel like they don’t still have a lot of work to do to make it back to the conference title game this year, which is probably a good thing for a team that was getting hailed far and wide for the way they took apart the Jets and Bills in consecutive weeks. We’re pretty sure coach Jim Harbaugh agrees with that assessment.
The good news is that, as Whitner points out, this is just the sixth game of the season. The 49ers have time to iron out things that went wrong on Sunday on both sides of the ball to ensure that they are better prepared for their next game against another top contender. After all, the 49ers beat the Giants during the regular season last year and then went on to fall in the NFC Championship Game. If they could switch that around this year, no one will much remember what happened on Sunday afternoon at Candlestick.