2012-GameRelease-Divisional

Life on the line
By Ron Kroichick, San Francisco Chronicle
Player Feature Story
Joe Staley meandered through a thoughtful treatise on the differences between playing offensive line and
defensive line. Staley and his fellow blockers often must react to their foes, he explained, while defensive
linemen can play more aggressively.
Staley eventually reached the punchline.
“You have to be a lot more intelligent to play offensive line,” he said.
Ray McDonald, standing about five feet away, promptly protested.
“I don’t know about that,” he said.
They both smiled, enjoying the byplay during a joint interview last week in Santa Clara. This was one time
a massive offensive tackle, and similarly large defensive tackle, had no interest in slamming each other to
the ground.
It’s natural to watch the 49ers, or any NFL team, and keep your eyes fixed on the so-called skill position
players – Alex Smith throwing, Frank Gore running, Randy Moss catching. But football, at its primitive
core, still hinges on oversized humans trying to knock the stuffing out of each other.
Life along the line of scrimmage is rugged and mysterious, mostly lost in the shadows (unless a lineman
commits a costly penalty). The line also is where many games are decided – where 6-foot-5, 315-pound
offensive tackles, like Staley, ruthlessly grapple with 6-3, 290-pound defensive tackles, like McDonald.
“There’s a little bit of craziness to it, yeah,” McDonald said of his job.
So, in attempt to gain some insight into the craziness, we convened Staley and McDonald for a
conversation about life on the line. How violent is it? What’s the strangest trash-talking exchange they’ve
ever had? What’s the dirtiest play they’ve ever seen?
This seemed like a relevant time to pose the questions, with Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh
coming to town Sunday at Candlestick Park. Suh tends to plant himself in the middle of the madness,
most notably when he stomped on the arm of Packers offensive lineman Evan Dietrich-Smith last season.
(McDonald didn’t even try to defend his defensive colleague on that one. “I thought it was kind of dirty,” he
said.)
First things first: Staley quickly sought to counter any easy assumptions when viewing players his size, or
McDonald’s.
“I think everyone has the perception of linemen as being these huge meatheads,” Staley said, “like we’re
out there saying, ‘Grrrr!’ and we’re all belly-bumping and trying to muscle each other. But there’s a lot of
technique and strategy and different things you have to do.
“You have to play calmly and with aggression, too. We don’t listen to a bunch of heavy metal music and
psych ourselves out. Offensive linemen have to be mellow, make quick decisions and be very focused.
It’s kind of like a quarterback – you have to react really quickly.”
That was Staley’s polite way of saying he doesn’t listen to music to energize himself before games. Still,
he and McDonald both acknowledged a transformation takes place on the field, because their positions
require a distinctive mix of pre-calculation and brute force.