THE NFL / BILL PLASCHKE : While 49ers Fiddle, Cowboys Burn Up the League

That creaking sound heard at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium on Sunday was not the irritating noise Barry Switzer makes when he clicks his tongue.

It was not Jerry Jones opening his wallet, or Troy Aikman shaking his head.

That sound was the NFL’s balance of power shifting from the San Francisco 49ers to the Dallas Cowboys.

While the 49ers were in Indianapolis, losing Steve Young for a month, the Cowboys were in San Diego, gaining enough bravado to last three months.

The 49ers, who began the season as the defending Super Bowl champion, are merely another wounded team at the side of the road.

For once, nobody will search the Cowboys for the gun, because the 49ers did this to themselves.

While the Cowboys spent the off-season logically preparing, the 49ers preened. While the Cowboys were scheming, the 49ers were savoring.

NFL logic holds that everything that makes a team great is undermined by a belief in that greatness.

That has been the 49ers’ problem. They started believing the hype.

They still have football’s best front office and one of its top three coaches. Carmen Policy should be commissioner one day. George Seifert may eventually coach his way into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

But somewhere between a 49-26 Super Bowl victory over the Chargers and a Sept. 3 date with the Saints at New Orleans, the organization lost its edge.

Now, San Francisco has no quarterback, no running game, a weak offensive line, poor pass defense and pathetic special teams.

The 49ers cannot be blamed for the Young situation. Every team suffers quarterback injuries and, because of the salary cap, most teams can do no better than a backup like Elvis Grbac.

But everything else happening on Centennial Boulevard in Santa Clara has made the Cowboys smile. Or is that a smirk?

RUNNING BACK

The 49ers did not re-sign running back Ricky Watters last season, partially because he was a jerk.

The Cowboys would have retained such a player in a Texas minute. After all, Charles Haley is still wearing a star on Sundays, isn’t he? That’s about the only time all week that he isn’t ripping his bosses or punching holes in locker room walls.

Although the 49ers say that the combination of Derek Loville and William Floyd has statistically replaced Watters, this team misses his on-field heart and nerve.

Neither Loville nor Floyd has behaved as if he can handle the ball in pressure situations. Loville gets leg-tackled, Floyd gets the yips.

If Watters were still around, and they had the ball inside the Indianapolis Colts’ 10-yard line at the end of the first half, as they did Sunday, would the 49ers have called three consecutive passes to wide receivers? Sunday, Young had to scramble on two of those passes.

Where was Floyd? And before his weak fourth-down effort, where was Loville?

KICKER

Doug Brien is nice kid, a local kid, good looking, big hearted.

But he should have been cut last month, not Monday.

How long would Brien, who has been allowed to contribute to both the 49ers’ losses this season with missed last-second field-goal attempts, have lasted with the Cowboys?

Lin Elliott will tell you. After scoring 119 points for the champion Cowboys in 1992, he missed two of his first six field-goal tries the next season.

After two games, he was cut.

Brien, who made only five of nine kicks from beyond 40 yards last season, should have been whacked after missing two big kicks against the Detroit Lions on Monday night in Game 4. But the 49ers, after looking at several other kickers, apparently didn’t have the heart.

One of those candidates, Cary Blanchard, has since kicked two game-winning field goals for his new team, the Colts.

One of those game winners, by the way, came Sunday, against the 49ers.

CORNERBACK

While the 49ers were courting cornerback Marquez Pope last spring with hopes of turning him into a cornerback, Jerry Jones was dialing Deion.

The 49ers rank 20th in pass defense and have been vanquished by the arms of Scott Mitchell and Jim Harbaugh.

OFFENSIVE LINE

Here’s one that should vex even those Bay Area fans who still wear Montana jerseys: When did the 49ers last draft an offensive lineman in either of the first two rounds?

If you guessed eight years ago, back when Harris Barton was still rolling around the University of North Carolina, you’re right.

During that same time, the Cowboys have made high draft picks of Erik Williams and Larry Allen.

Today, the 49ers are blocking people with three guys from their glory years--Barton, who is 31; Steve Wallace, 30, and Jesse Sapolu, 34--plus a guy from the New York Giants’ glory years, Bart Oates, 36.

When these starters have been sometimes injured, their substitutes have been ineffective, allowing Young to be sacked 15 times.

Cowboy quarterbacks have been dumped only six times, the second-fewest sacks in the league.