Frank Gore gets 1,000 the hard way

By Darrell Laurant  |   Tuesday, December 25, 2007  |  Comments( 0 )

San Francisco 49ers
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In so many ways, this has been the football season from hell for San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore.

It started when Gore broke his right hand in training camp, giving him a late start. He managed to get himself ready for the start of the regular season, then lost his mother on Sept. 12 to kidney failure. A month later, he suffered a serious ankle sprain against the Giants. When he was healthy and playing well again, one of his best friends from the University of Miami, Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor, was shot to death in his home.

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, the 49ers were imploding offensively, and the games were not playing out in Gore's favor. Week after week, San Francisco found itself behind early, meaning that the clock-eating ground game with Gore at the center had to be scrapped in favor of trying to play catchup (always unsuccessfully) through the air.

All of this made it especially sweet last Sunday when Gore became only the fifth 49er running back to post back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons, joining Joe Perry, Roger Craig, Garrison Hearst and Charlie Garner.

True, the 16-game season has devalued 1,000 yards considerably, but Gore definitely worked for his.

"That was really important," left tackle Adam Snyder told the San Francisco Chronicle. "We found out last week how many yards he needed and wanted to make sure he got it."

He did it with an 89-yard rushing performance against Tampa Bay that followed 138 against Cincinnati. The 49ers won both of those games.

In the 21-19 victory over the playoff-bound Buccaneers (who, in all fairness, rested some of their starters after the first quarter), Gore was the workhorse on several touchdown drives and caught a 23-yard scoring pass from quarterback Shaun Hill.

"It's been a tough year for me on and off the field," Gore said, "but I think it's going to make me stronger."

They don't come much stronger than Frank Gore, a player whose career was essentially written off after he suffered two devastating knee injuries at Miami.

"It shows consistency," Gore said of his second 1,000-yard season. "It says a lot about this team."

No 49er back has ever passed that milestone three years in a row. If Gore could do it this year, faced with a solid wall of adversity, it would be hard to bet against him in 2008.
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