The 49ers lost in Seattle for the seventh consecutive time on Sunday, falling to the Seahawks 12-9 in a game that was surprisingly within their grasp. Yes the 49ers are now 0-2 and yes they still haven’t scored a touchdown, but there was something different about San Francisco’s performance this time around, according to former 49ers tight end Brent Jones.
“It’s really interesting because I know people want to bash these guys, but that was a heroic effort I have to say,” Jones told Tolbert and Lund on Monday night. “You’re on the road, in one of the three of four worst places to play, and you had them at the wire. One of the things that I completely think, and I’ve said this the last couple years, the Seahawks have been living in our head for probably four years now. And physically they scare us every time we play them. They’ve taken control physically in the last three or four years when we’ve played them and (Sunday) that was not the case.”
The Seahawks entered the 2017 season projected to have the best defense in the NFL, but the 49ers were just as impressive on Sunday, holding the Seahawks to just 312 total yards (they had the ball for a whopping 37 minutes) and sacking Russell Wilson three times. Unfortunately, the ineptness of San Francisco’s offense was not enough to overcome.
“Our defense came out and was so dang physical early that we had the Seahawks on their heels,” Jones continued. “Now we didn’t show as well as we would’ve liked offensively that’s for sure, but we weren’t that far away from going on the road and beating those guys and coming away with a huge W. Were it not for that last drive and Russell Wilson doing some magic — we were in his face, we had pressure, we were all over that offensive line — but it still comes back to what we talked about last week: We’re one or two plays away from winning a game, but we’re not good enough to compensate for missing on those couple of plays.”
Jones pointed the the 49ers’ young defensive line as the catalyst for turning around a unit that was the worst in the NFL last year by a significant margin.
“Some of our high round draft choices have started to step up,” Jones said. “Arik Armstead looked good and finally got a sack. Tank Carradine was moving around looking pretty good. DeForest Buckner is already a player. Ray-Ray Armstrong actually looked pretty darn good yesterday, and NaVorro (Bowman) is back and rolling. Eric Reid was really aggressive. You kind’ve go around the horn and you say to yourself part of it might be scheme, but part of it’s motivation and we’ve got some better players, so there’s an uplift all around where iron starts to sharpen iron, not only on game day but during the week in practice.
“It just looked like we were much more physical on the defensive side of the ball than we’ve ever been against the Seahawks. I mean I hate to say this, but it feels to me like we’ve been intimidated by the Seahawks physicality the last three years and that has been frustrating to watch. We go into these games and it’s almost like we’re defeated before we even start. That was not the case (Sunday), we had those guys on their heels. ”
Listen to the full interview below. To hear Jones’ comments on the defense, start from the beginning.