| | Mariucci's future still up in the air
By Ray Ratto
Special to ESPN.com
There are few things in sports as mentally exhausting, let alone distasteful, as a coaching rumor.
And that's just the effect on us. I mean, Tom Coughlin to the Bengals? Mike Mularkey? How? Why? When? Damn.
|  | | Steve Mariucci's future with the 49ers remains in doubt despite the team's come-from-behind victory on Sunday. |
It is particularly painful after a weekend like this, in which two sensational comebacks, a jaw-dropping upset and a disproportionate beating conspired to make the best wild-card weekend in NFL history. Two-hundred-twenty-one points in 14 hours of football is plenty bewildering on their own without getting into the ways they were compiled.
But after the best of those four games, the 49ers-Giants pyrospectacular, the topic of Steve Mariucci's job security in San Francisco remained close to the surface, even as the 49ers prepared for Sunday's game in Tampa.
Here's what we know so far:
The 49er organization is behind its coach ... roughly 40 percent or so.
Negotiations on a contract extension will begin after the season ends ... which could be as soon as Monday or as late as two Mondays after that.
Mariucci would like a raise but probably won't get a Parcells-sized jumbo package.
Jacksonville has an opening, allegedly with Mariucci's name on it.
This whole discussion is crazy.
It's that fifth one that rings truest of all. Only in San Francisco, though, where the idealized spectre of Bill Walsh remains on site and in full throat, can a coach with Mariucci's record (60-43, a percentage of .582) be regarded as freight bait.
Everyone else in America may be doubled over in laughter at the very idea, but here where football was invented (and just ask anyone on Nob Hill if you don't believe it), ongoing coaching angst is part and parcel of the entire 49er football experience.
Now you, thinking logically, would reflect upon Sunday's flabbergasting comeback and decide that Mariucci is now essentially bulletproof.
Oh, dear. So trusting. So naïve.
There were a fair share of radio gabfesters who suggested Sunday night that the 49ers wouldn't have had to come back from 38-14 at all if Mariucci hadn't been so conservative, by-the-book and all-around tight-hindered to begin with.
Those are among the complaints most often leveled against him by both those inside the organization and in the field -- that he is not properly stewarding Walsh's legacy of offensive creativity and winning three more games a year than the 49ers play.
This lack of realistic goals all come with the fans knowing what they want. Which in this case is everything and a side of whatever else you got. That is, after all, what they are used to from the days before the salary cap.
|  | | Jeff Garcia's touchdown had 49er fans celebrating on Sunday, but it may not be enough to reward Steve Mariucci with a new contract. |
But the weird thing is that the game merely complicates the process.
Mariucci's future is now tied even tighter to the negotiating skills of his agent, who is operating below the radar so as not to be accused of negotiating in the media, one of the prime complaints made against Mariucci last year when he was trolling for the Tampa job.
The trick is in knowing how much leverage is leverage, and how much is just blackjacking. And in the rarefied air that is the 49er history book, a wild-card playoff win, no matter how spectacularly procured, is still three wins short of budget projections.
Now given the team's physical limitations, exacerbated by a rich list of injuries, 11 wins is a pretty good showing. Not enough to put this whole sordid discussion behind us, of course, because there are plenty of palms to grease, feelings to soothe and spin to perform before this dance is done. But it does change the negotiations enough to more evenly distribute the scales between give and take.
But nothing is done and sure, not even after Jeff Garcia's finest moment and the euphoria of an area that had long ago taken on a tinge of jade.
The 49ers haven't produced a moment like this in years ... even Terrell Owens' game-winning score with three seconds left in the '98 wild card game against the Packers doesn't compare, and almost everyone claiming to be a 49er Faithful is back on the bandwagon and claiming that they never left.
But for Steve Mariucci, it's still early. Way early.
Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com
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Never Say Die
