SANTA CLARA–San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback Brian Hoyer completed nearly 70 percent of his passes on Sunday afternoon.
The franchise’s new starter was efficient, nailing down 24 completions on 35 attempts in his first regular season opportunity with his new team.
But those raw numbers don’t paint an accurate portrait of Hoyer’s performance, and he knows it.
Many of Hoyer’s completions were short, high percentage throws that he’s expected to make. Many of the plays he didn’t make in San Francisco’s 23-3 loss to Carolina are also ones he knows he should have made.
The ninth-year NFL veteran was sacked four times, threw one interception, and couldn’t lead his offense to the end zone even though he threw a number of home run balls that wound up falling incomplete.
“We missed a few opportunities early and you’ve got to take advantage of those when they’re there,” Hoyer said. “The penalties, shot ourselves in the foot with a few of those, and you’re behind schedule, which is tough against a good defense like that. We were battling uphill and a lot of it had to do with our own mistakes and not so much with what they were doing.”
The 49ers’ offense didn’t score until eight seconds remained in the third quarter, and Hoyer knows there’s plenty of room for improvement. After a large number of procedural issues including a delay of game penalty that ruined his debut for San Francisco, Hoyer expressed frustration and said it’s on the offense to take ownership of the performance.
“It was probably as disappointing as it could have been,” Hoyer said. “Obviously it’s always good to get points on the board, but when you get it handed to you like that, you just have to go in, figure out, what’s wrong, make the corrections and move on. We’ve got seven more days until our next game and we’ve got to make the corrections and get it right before we go up to Seattle.”
Hoyer’s worst throw of the day came on his second attempt of the second half, a play-action toss over the middle that was easily intercepted by Panthers’ linebacker Luke Kuechly. That throw led to a short field and seven points for the Panthers, helping Carolina put the nail in the coffin early in the third quarter.
“I just didn’t see Luke,” Hoyer said. Knowing him, we tried a hard play-action sell. Usually we throw that route to a receiver so we were thinking maybe he would go the other way. I came off and I know we got the first guy, I just didn’t see him. And it’s tough, you come off of play-action and you just got to know when you play a guy like him you have to make sure.”
