49ers beat Raiders for first win in ‘10

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

Alex Smith is realistic. He expected to get booed again. A win feels great, yet it’s still only one.

Somebody had to come through all the sloppiness — and Smith raised his game at last.

When the home crowd began jeering Smith for a second straight week and begging for backup David Carr, it looked to be another long day for San Francisco’s embattled quarterback.

Instead, Smith threw second-half touchdown passes to Michael Crabtree and Vernon Davis and the 49ers finally won their first game, beating the Oakland Raiders 17-9 on Sunday in a penalty-filled game.

“You’ve got to start with one. You’ve got to start somewhere,” Smith said. “You try to fix the negatives and build on the positives from the last five weeks.”

Crabtree made a go-ahead 32-yard TD reception on the last play of the third quarter and Smith hit Davis on a 17-yard score with 7:14 remaining. Frank Gore ran for 149 yards, including a 64-yard scramble that set up Davis’ third touchdown of the season.

“I feel like I just took a whole house off my back that was weighing us down,” Davis said.

Smith overcame a slow start to go 16 of 33 for 196 yards in his first turnover-free game of 2010, though San Francisco committed 11 penalties for 143 yards. The Niners, whose 1-5 start is the franchise’s worst since Bill Walsh’s first team lost its initial seven games in 1979, denied Oakland its first back-to-back victories since 2008.

Sebastian Janikowski kicked field goals of 27, 24 and 40 yards for the Raiders (2-4). Oakland had eight penalties for 60 yards in a game that was played through a steady drizzle into the second half.

Jason Campbell, like Smith a first-round draft pick in 2005, completed 8 of 21 passes for 83 yards and was sacked twice playing in place of the injured Bruce Gradkowski. The Raiders struggled to convert on offense a week after they beat the Chargers to end a 13-game losing streak to San Diego.