Photo by Abbie Parr/Getty Images
Sunday’s 37-27 loss to the Seattle Seahawks wasn’t over in the first half, but it sure felt like it. Despite just a 13-7 Seattle lead at halftime, the 49ers were treading water. And there’s only so long you can tread.
There were some embarrassing plays, like the failed wildcat run with Jerick McKinnon on third-and-five—head coach Kyle Shanahan said they would have gone for it on fourth down, but after running it into a Cover-0 blitz and losing three yards, decided against it—and the long screen to Trent Taylor—which has worked in the past but was covered well, Shanahan said, by Seattle’s linemen—were among those.
But there were plenty of other opportunities, many, if not most of which, were related to Jimmy Garoppolo’s dreadful performance. That failure wasn’t called out explicitly, but it’s not that hard to read between the lines.
Asked if he was disappointed with Garoppolo’s performance, Shanahan said, “yeah,” but then took blame for himself and the entire offense.
“Yeah. I was frustrated with the whole offense, starting with myself,” Shanahan said. “This wasn’t a very good day for us. I thought the defense came out, played pretty inspired, gave us a good chance to get up on them and we missed those opportunities… I was disappointed with the whole group. No one played great. That always starts with me.”
Those missed opportunities tended to be quarterback-related. Especially against blitzes. Garoppolo, who left and did not return in the third quarter, was sacked three times.
Trent Williams said there were some communication issues on protection. It’s often hard to tell whether that lies with the linemen or quarterback until reviewing film, but Garoppolo has failed to properly identify blitzes and set the protection throughout his career.
Shanahan saw these blitzes as opportunities wasted.
“They brought a lot of blitzes and they brought them early,” Shanahan said. “Usually when you bring blitzes it’s going to be pretty hit or miss. It’s going to be a good play for one team and a bad play for the other team. I thought we had a chance to get rid of it a couple times and they got to us too fast and we didn’t make them pay for it. We did a little bit at the end, but obviously that was too late… They were risky with a lot of their blitzes. Sometimes you like that, but you’ve got to make them pay, though, and we didn’t.”
Williams saw much of the same, and pointed to Garoppolo’s interception as an unacceptable mistake against Russell Wilson. He also highlighted “magical quarterbacks” like Aaron Rodgers, coming up in later weeks, which Garoppolo is very obviously not a part of.
“I think the turnover inside the red zone, stuff like that, it’s kind of hard to overcome, especially when you’re going against a guy like Russell Wilson,” Williams said. “Our defense did such a great job at the beginning of the game and I feel like they had their number, they were getting stops, flying around. As an offense, we just didn’t complete our side of the deal by making them pay for good field position. We let them overcome some mistakes that we should have made them pay for.”
Ask yourself the last time you heard an opposing player say that you can’t make mistakes, “especially when you’re going against a guy like Jimmy Garoppolo.”
It simply hasn’t happened, at least not in this season.
Without Deebo Samuel to dink and dunk to, Garoppolo was hopeless, and so was the 49ers offense, until their savior, Nick Mullens, entered the game and gave the team a chance.
Garoppolo went 11-of-16 for 85 yards and that one ruinous interception. Mullens was 18-of-25 with two touchdowns and ran an offense that Shanahan saw as making the Seahawks pay for reckless pressure.
There were clearly other issues, like the lack of pressure on Wilson and D.K. Metcalf burning Emmanuel Moseley, but this was known before the game. That was always going to happen. Garoppolo had to, but didn’t give the 49ers a chance. It’s clear that with a contract with just $3.2 million remaining in guaranteed money—which the team has conspicuously not touched—he’s running out of his own chances to remain the supposed franchise quarterback.