After five weeks, the San Francisco 49ers have found themselves in a pattern of sloppy play and wasted opportunities which has sent them reeling to the bottom of the NFC West, a division they could just as easily be leading.
But what-ifs are irrelevant. This team has made mistakes, and if anything, has demonstrated regression in terms of preventing future mistakes.
Sunday’s 17-10 loss to the still-undefeated Arizona Cardinals was a travesty, given the masterful performance by the defense and near-heroics by Trey Lance. Here’s what went wrong and what went right:
Trey Lance
There will be a few other things to point out here after reviewing the All-22 tape, but much of what Lance achieved and failed at were evident from watching the game.
The bad
- Batted balls: Four of Lance’s passes were batted at the line of scrimmage, three of which came on the 49ers’ final two drives of the game, including one swat by J.J. Watt on a massive 4th-and-3, which gave the Cardinals excellent field position, which they converted into a game-sealing touchdown. Per ESPN’s Nick Wagoner, that’s the most by a 49ers quarterback in the past 10 years. Clearly, Lance will have to make adjustments to avoid this in the future.
- Missed throws, reads: The two biggest mistakes by Lance were the early interception thrown over Travis Benjamin, which the Cardinals responded to with a touchdown, and a third-and-four pass to Brandon Aiyuk which he missed. It was an easy slant that he overthrew, and the Watt pass breakup on fourth down stumped the 49ers immediately after. There was also a missed zone read by Lance on a 2nd-and-4, which became a 3rd-and-7, then a failed 4th-and-2.
- Unnecessary hits: Both Nick Bosa — “Might need to learn how to slide… work on his juke move a little bit, too” — and Jimmie Ward — “Banged his body up a little bit more than I’d like” — pointed this out, as if to say that if they were on the other side, they would have teed off on Lance. There were at least four opportunities in which Lance took unnecessary hits, sometimes trying to fight for extra yardage rather than sliding or getting out of bounds. He’ll get injured if he continues at his pace.
The good
- Massive, clutch throws: He had one unreal throw to Deebo Samuel just outside the final five minutes, had two key third-down conversions on out routes to both Mohamed Sanu and Brandon Aiyuk, and found Aiyuk again — incredible body control and run after the catch by him — for a 26-yard gain on second and 25. He continued moving the chains in tough situations.
- Escaping pressure: Lance escaped the pocket on numerous occasions and kept plays alive. Many of these opportunities were called back for holding penalties, but he was excellent at giving the 49ers a second chance on broken plays.
- Chewing up yards: Despite being put in an unfathomable amount of long yardage situations, the 49ers offense kept moving, at least, until they committed one penalty too many. Lance finished with 192 passing yards and 89 rush yards.
4th-down playcalling: Good decisions, bad execution
Shanahan’s decisions to go for it on fourth down five times were fantastic. Some people may disagree, but the analytics — which have long pointed out Shanahan as an exceedingly conservative fourth-down decision-maker — suggest that his decision to go for it all increased the 49ers’ chances to win, sometimes significantly.
Arizona came into this game with one of the league’s best offenses and Kyler Murray playing at an MVP level. To expect them to be limited to 17 points is not a realistic assessment of how this game would play out. This was a superhuman effort by the 49ers’ defense, coupled with a less-than-100 percent Murray, who missed multiple opportunities, including a wide-open touchdown opportunity to DeAndre Hopkins.
Shanahan’s aggressiveness was well-founded. The execution, though, was not.
He ran a slow-developing power play with Lance up the middle, which failed, on 4th-and-2. The near-touchdown by Lance could be argued to be on the quarterback, who came back inside and went low rather than diving outside for the pylon. The most egregious failure, though, was the attempted fullback sneak which the 49ers ran successfully against the Packers. It was stunningly obvious, and both Budda Baker and linebacker Jordan Hicks sniffed it out, timing it easily. The last fourth down was the Watt swat.
Shanahan, who built an offense founded around impressive, deceptive motions, seems to abandon that creativity in his fourth-down playcalling and resorts to power plays. The 49ers’ offensive line was not winning that battle
Mistakes: Not good!
- Long yardage situations: All of the issues below contributed to fundamentally unmanageable situations. The 49ers were faced with an unbelievable 15 snaps (on non-4th down situations) of more than 10 yards to go. Thanks to an absurd body control catch by Brandon Aiyuk on a 2nd-and-25, one of those drives resulted in the 49ers’ only touchdown. Here’s what the drives looked like:
- Drops: Mohamed Sanu dropped an undroppable first-down worthy play on 3rd-and-11 on the final drive of the first half. Deebo Samuel had one first-quarter drop, and then dropped a screen pass inside the 5-yard line. It was thrown behind him by Lance, but that completion could have put the 49ers in a situation to avoid the Lance crunch stop at the goal line.
- Penalties: This was the most egregious. Mike McGlinchey had two holds and one false start, and Trent Williams had two holds, one of which was negated by McGlinchey’s. Travis Benjamin had one, and so did Ross Dwelley. That first drive of the second half was stalled entirely by penalties.
- Lance missed reads, throws: These were mentioned above, but the miss to Aiyuk, the interception, missed checkdown-turned-sack and missed zone read to Mitchell were all significant.
- Offensive line play: This falls in line with the penalties, but the offensive line could not hang with the Cardinals against Chandler Jones, Zach Allen, and a J.J. Watt who looked a hell of a lot like his old self. And this wasn’t just an Alex Mack-Daniel Brunskill thing like it has been in past weeks. This was McGlinchey and Williams getting beat.
Defense: Very good
There’s not even too much to say here. Aside from a few explosive plays when Dontae Johnson and Josh Norman and at least once for Emmanuel Moseley, too (he also had a bad missed tackle), the defense was tremendous.
The pass rush has been getting home, and there are multiple times when holds are, inexplicably, not being called. There’s an argument that Arik Armstead got held in the end zone and the 49ers should have been rewarded with a safety. It was close.
At the end of the day, this defense held Kyler Murray — who, as mentioned above, did not seem 100 percent, but that’s partially due to the defense — to 17 points and crucially, kept his drives mostly short, allowing the 49ers to win the time of possession.