Niners Drill Drew

Football is a rough, tough game and people get hurt. People play hurt. That’s football.

Having admitted all of the above, I can only ask, what in the name of Clive Rush was Drew Bledsoe doing on the field at the end of Sunday’s 28-3 loss to the world champion San Francisco 49ers?

Bledsoe sustained a separated left shoulder in the first quarter of Sunday’s beating (the Patriots didn’t know this officially until after the game). He missed one series, got taped up at halftime and came back to take a ferocious beating in the second half. In his first four drives after intermission, Bledsoe was intercepted three times, fumbled once and was sacked four times.

In the final 5 minutes, when the score was 28-3 and fans were leaving, Patriots coach Bill Parcells kept sending Bledsoe onto the field. It was pathetic. Bledsoe’s left arm dangled lifelessly. He looked like a scarecrow with no stuffing in the left sleeve. The 49ers stayed in his face and kept pounding him. In those final two drives, Bledsoe threw 13 incompletions and was sacked once.

Forgive the blasphemy of my criticizing the Great White Tuna - the god of grid - but this nitwit scribe saw no reason to keep the former Washington State University star in the game.

Even though the Patriots didn’t yet know Bledsoe had a separated shoulder, it seemed cruel and unusual to leave him on the field for this one-armed humiliation.

“I wasn’t surprised I finished the game,” said the third-year QB.

Was he in pain?

“Not really,” he said. “They said I could play, so I played.”

Parcells, asked about having Bledsoe in at the end, said, “He was well enough to finish the game, obviously, or I wouldn’t have put him in there.”

Did he take an unusual beating?

“No,” said Parcells.

Bledsoe’s parents and 52 other friends and neighbors watched him dissolve in the sunshine. His problems started when he took a vicious but clean hit from Ken Norton Jr. midway through the first quarter. Norton drove Bledsoe’s left shoulder into the turf and the QB yielded to Scott Zolak for the next series.

“We got caught in a strong-side blitz,” Bledsoe said of the Norton hit. “I took a good hit. The injury did not impact my passing.”

After sustaining the injury, Bledsoe went to the locker room and was examined by team physician Bert Zarins. He came back out to play the second quarter, then had the shoulder taped at halftime. The quarterback took an X-ray before leaving the stadium and it was then the Patriots announced he had a separated shoulder - but they could not determine the degree of separation.

Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who has committed to pay Bledsoe $42 million the next seven years, was asked if he was comfortable with Bledsoe playing all the second half and answered, “From what I’ve heard, yeah. But I don’t have all those details. It sure gives you a sick feeling in your stomach. I just hope he’s OK.”

Answering the same question, Bledsoe’s agent, Leigh Steinberg, said, “Was I comfortable? No. I was extremely uncomfortable. But that’s NFL football and it was the coach’s and doctor’s call. … It was clear as you watched the end of the game that something was askew. But the problem is, Drew’s a competitor and he wants to play.”

But Bledsoe, as everybody knows, is The Franchise. And now he is in the first whopper slump of his career. It’s been a tough year. In three games he’s completed 76 of 149 passes for 810 yards, has been intercepted five times and failed to throw a TD pass.

He played three quarters Sunday with a separated shoulder.

That’s football. And it’s also dumb.