By Morris Phillips

In Nashville, they’re not used to the 49ers looking—and playing—like this.

The 49ers made LP Field feel like home away from home, blowing out to a 24-point second half lead in a 31-17 win over the Titans.  The 49ers maintained proximity with the Seahawks in the NFC West, improving to 5-2 on the season preceding dates with the winless Jaguars and 3-3 Panthers surrounding a bye week.

Frank Gore led the way with a pair of short touchdown runs as the efficient 49ers offense piggybacked the defense, which ruined Jake Locker’s return to the Tennessee lineup.  Locker missed the two previous games with hip and knee injuries, but spent much of the first half on the sideline as the 49ers dominated time of possession and built a 17-0 lead.

Locker led a furious fourth quarter rally and finished with a respectable 326 yards passing and two touchdowns, but he was sacked three times and threw an interception trying to overcome the Titans inability to run against the 49ers’ loaded front seven.  The Titans rushed for just 70 yards and featured back Chris Johnson had only 39 of those.

What the 49ers defense didn’t do, the special teams did, coming up with a fumble recovery for a touchdown in the fourth quarter when punt returner Darius Reynaud was rocked by Darryl Morris which allowed Kaseem Osgood to recover Reynaud’s muff in the end zone.  That score put the 49ers up 31-10 and blunted a brief Titans’ rally.

Colin Kaepernick turned a mistake free performance and used his legs as well to score from 20 yards out, giving the 49ers a 10-0, second quarter lead.  Kapernick finished 13 for 21 passing with no turnovers.  If Kaepernick had been smarting from unsubstantiated or undisclosed leg and foot injuries in recent weeks, they improved enough for the second-year quarterback to return to the read option as he scored out of the look and ran 11 times total for 68 yards.

The only other time the 49ers visited Nashville in 2005, the 49ers were reeling under first-year Coach Mike Nolan in what would be a 4-12 season.  That day, the 49ers fell 33-22 with Ken Dorsey at quarterback to fall 0-5 on the road.  This time, the LP Field crowd suffered through a mostly uncompetitive game that only perked up with a few, brief skirmishes in the fourth quarter and Johnson’s 66-yard touchdown catch and run that brought the Titans within 24-10 with 7:07 remaining in the game.

The occasion also furthered the peculiar reputation Coach Jim Harbaugh has so carefully sought.  On the sideline—with and without spectacles—the third-year coach was animated as usual in leading his team and at one point tried to break up a confrontation between big tackle Joe Staley and Tennessee’s Bernard Pollard.  After the game, Harbaugh put the win in perspective as only he can.

“This was a big game, and we were treating it like the biggest game of the season.  It was our next game.  This was Game 7 for us, and we were treating it like Game 7 for us, and we were treating it like Game 7 of the World Series or Game 7 of the Stanley Cup,” Harbaugh mused.  “Now, the next game will be Game 8.”

Game 8 comes next Sunday in London against 0-6 Jacksonville.  The 49ers took off on the long flight to Europe immediately after the game.  And continuing on the theme of the 49ers looking more and more like themselves from 2012 and their Super Bowl appearance in places where they rarely venture, the 49ers only other visit to London in 2010 came as a 1-6 team that was fortunate enough to get past the Broncos that day in Mike Singletary’s final season as 49ers’ head coach.