I am in the press box at AT&T three hours before Game 2 of the NLCS. This is a nice place to be. And I’m thinking about the 49ers game I did not see on Sunday.

I wonder about Kaepernick getting 16 snaps and I’m thinking, in my ignorance, it confuses matters for the team to have two such different QBs sharing duty. I know they represent a change of pace from each other. It’s just that against the Giants neither seemed to be effective and I wonder if the Niners offense is losing its identity as a balanced and smash mouth offense.

I wonder how Alex Smith feels about all this in and out. This doesn’t feel like Joe Montana subbing for Steve DeBerg. This feels muddled.

I could be wrong.

I notice — in the sense of not having noticed anything — Alex Smith was not effective when he had to come back and do the quarterback rescue thing against an elite team. That is troubling.

I notice some Niners fans say the Niners didn’t really mind losing this game because they play the Seahawks on a short turnaround and that is a division game and division games matter more than out of division games.

I say that line of reasoning is completely wrong. I know how football coaches think, I really do, and they want to win EVERY game in the 16 game season. They don’t take off games. The Giants didn’t take off the game and it was an out of division game for them. The Giants are Super Bowl champs and they wanted to show their quality to the world. They did. The Niners also wanted to show their quality. They have quality but not the same as the Giants.

Greg Roman, I assume, wants to be a head coach in college or the NFL. His game plans, depending so much on tricks, will not help him make the leap. He needs to control himself. And Jim Harbaugh, who got taken to school by Tom Coughlin, needs to control Roman.