By Morris Phillips

SEATTLE–For the third straight season, the 49ers swallowed a very bitter pill.

Despite leading at halftime and 17-13 after three quarters, the 49ers are headed home and the Seahawks are headed to New York after a tough, painful 23-17 loss in the NFC Championship Game at Century Link Field.

Colin Kaepernick appeared poised to deliver a second straight Super Bowl berth, but was picked off twice in the fourth quarter including a seemingly accurate throw to Michael Crabtree in the end zone with less than a minute remaining.

Accurate but redirected at the last second by a lunging Richard Sherman and then snatched by hustling linebacker Malcom Smith to effectively end the 49ers’ season.

“Well, I told y’all that Crabtree was mediocre at best, so I would never let him catch a game-winner on me,” Sherman boasted.  “This is a joke, right?”

“Ball thrown to Crab that really could have gone either way,” Coach Jim Harbaugh recounted.  “If that goes about an inch or two Crabtree catches it for a touchdown and we win but Richard Sherman made a terrific play.”

Behind Sherman’s braggadocio and Harbaugh’s matter-of-fact observations was a terrific football game, worthy of the NFL’s biggest stage and in doubt until the game’s final moments.  A statistical dead heat, the game came down to turnovers—not only the ones committed by Kaepernick, but also the one that wasn’t on the play that ended the season of 49ers’ All-Pro linebacker NaVorro Bowman.

With the Seahawks driving in the red zone early in the fourth quarter, Seattle’s Russell Wilson threw middle to Jerome Kearse who got to the 1-yard line where he was stripped by Bowman.  But in snatching the ball Bowman brought the full weight of Kearse down on his leg causing a visually gruesome injury that had the linebacker writhing in pain while lying on his back with the ball.  But when Marshawn Lynch grabbed the ball, the referees inexplicably gave the ball back to the Seahawks.

And while the 49ers recovered a fumble by Lynch on the next play to end the threat, the 49ers’ play went from potentially super to emotionally spent a flip of a switch.  Two plays later, Kaepernick was picked off by Kam Chancellor and the Seahawks managed to add the field goal for a six-point lead that they seemingly had firmly in hand just a minute prior.

“We had like two or three chances at the end,” Crabtree said.  “We just couldn’t capitalize.’

The 49ers needed to avoid a slow start that doomed their two previous trips to Seattle.  They did that by stripping Wilson on the game’s first play from scrimmage and cashing the turnover into a 3-0 lead.  Then in the second period, with Kaepernick enjoying a big first half running the ball, the 49ers turned to Anthony Dixon, who flew in on 4^th and goal to go from the 1-yard line.

In the third quarter, Kaepernick bought time rolling right and found Anquan Boldin in the end zone for a 17-10 lead.  But the Seahawks responded on the Doug Baldwin’s huge kick return and the San Francisco lead was trimmed once again to 17-13.

Russell finished 16 for 25 for 215 yards and a 35-yard touchdown that came with the Seahawks attempting to draw the 49ers offsides on fourth down.  But when the encroachment resulted in a penalty, Wilson didn’t blink, catching Kearse streaking toward the end zone and connecting for Seattle’s first lead, 20-17 with 13:44 remaining in the game.

Kaepernick threw the damaging picks, but he proved worthy of the big stage.  The third-year signal caller ran for over 100 yards in the first half, only to see his kneel down to end the half take his total below 100.  Still, Kaepernick  was despondent afterwards, blaming the loss on himself.

“I didn’t play good enough to win.  I turned the ball over three times.  I cost us this game.”

Besides Bowman’s injury, the 49ers lost guard Mike Iupati and would have had neither guy had they advanced to the Super Bowl.  But the 49ers didn’t advance, but rather gained a long off-season to reflect on how close they came and trying to regain the motivation to go deep in the playoffs for the fourth straight year.

“That’s always going to be our mindset,” Frank Gore said.  “We play to try to get to the Super Bowl and win.”

It’s just not now and not this season for the frustrated 49ers.

“We still have a great team,” Vernon Davis said.  “We got here and didn’t quite pull it off the way we expected to.  But like I said before, I’m excited about next season because of the guys that we have in this locker room.”