Jimmie Ward has not seen Super Bowl LIV feature film in a month, maybe two. Metaphorical wounds were too fresh, too painful to tolerate a repeat of how the 49ers blew a bilingual, fourth-quarter lead to the Kansas City Chiefs in grainy detail.
Time turned lacerations to scars and tempered raw emotion enough for the 49ers’ free safety to see the game as a learning tool. Ward did not scan it once. He saw it again and again, maybe 20 times in total.
When viewed critically, the heartache was damned, but not the motivation. Count Ward among those driven by dreams of a return trip, and win the Super Bowl again and reach the damn thing.
However, he has put it in good perspective. Ward knows the 49ers will not be able to win the Super Bowl in August. Can’t win it on February 7, 2021 either, without doing what is needed every day for it.
“I hear a lot of my teammates say they want to go back to that place and win it,” Ward said during a video conference Tuesday. ‘That’s what everyone wants to do, get to the Super Bowl and win it. My approach is more about taking one day at a time, one game at a time. I’ve been in that position, so I’ve seen what it costs to get to the Super Bowl, but you can’t look past the first game of this season.
“I can not look past tomorrow’s practice. I just have to do everything right.”
[49ERS INSIDER PODCAST: Listen to the latest episode]
That one-time cliché is easy to say, extremely difficult to do for a team that was only minutes away from a championship and let it go. It is human to dream away about making a wrong right.
Spend all your time looking at the horizon and you push over a rock at your feet. That happens with runners-up so often that there is a term for it.
The terrible Super Bowl cat.
It can affect teams that win a title, but it does hurt teams that leave empty handed. Every team that loses a championship game wants to win the next one.
History says that is hurd.
Only three teams have won the Super Bowl after losing the year before. The Dallas Cowboys did it in the 1971 season, the Miami Dolphins won every game and title in the 1972 campaign, and the New England Patriots played well back and won it all after the 2018 season.
That’s a short list, considering how many threads there are. Minnesota, Denver and New England are back to the title game and lost again. We all remember the early 1990s Bills, who made four straight Super Bowls and lost every single one.
The 49ers are certainly capable of going on a redemption tour. They need all the talent and coaching to win a staged NFC West, go on a deep playoff run and finish playing in Tampa for Super Bowl LV.
Anything less, it seems, would be a disappointment. How many expectations can not be realized if players are still alive in the past. They cannot make dreams come true by skipping steps. Therefore, Ward’s philosophy must continue in the locker room of 49ers.
Security Jaquiski Tartt’s takeover on the subject suggests it has.
“Everyone has the same thoughts,” Tartt said. ‘Make it all the way and not let that sick feeling in you win. We want to get back to that stage and win it all. ”
[RELATED: Steve Young believes 49ers must prove lasting power]
Exorcising a demon does not happen in a day. It costs discipline over hundreds of them, and emotion over a missed opportunity can’t thank you forever. The 49ers need to embrace the grind to live up to expectations and do what few teams have done, go back to the Super Bowl and win it.
“I just feel like you need to get over it,” Ward said, “and think about how you can run better in Game 1.”
