San Francisco 49ers Must Cut Out Mistakes To Contend In NFC

One of the messages San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan consistently preaches to his players is the importance of “doing right longer”.

Shanahan is a firm believer that if his team does the right things for long enough it will eventually result in a win. His 49ers players did a lot of things right in Week 7 against the Kansas City Chiefs, but unfortunately they did not do them for nearly long enough to knock off a bonafide Super Bowl contender.

The 49ers fell to a 44-23 defeat to the Chiefs at Levi’s Stadium, Kansas City shredding a defense many consider to be the best in the NFL and taking advantage of consistent mistakes from San Francisco on both sides of the ball to pull away in the fourth quarter. Shanahan’s team had led 10-0 in the first quarter and still only trailed 28-23 early in the fourth.

San Francisco had little problem moving the ball against an aggressive Chiefs defense, ending the game with 444 net yards at an average of 6.2 yards per play.

Yet the consistent gains the 49ers made when they had the ball were frequently undermined by failures of execution that prevented them from keeping pace with a potent Chiefs team that arguably represents the worst opposition to make such errors against.

The Chiefs punished the 49ers for a mistake-riddled display on offense and defense and, following a defeat that dropped San Francisco to 3-4 and from first to third in the NFC West, one of the primary questions surrounding the Niners is whether they can put an end to the errors and get back on track to produce a second-half surge towards the postseason.

Penalties were a key factor in the 49ers’ loss. San Francisco had 10 accepted penalties for 80 yards, with holding calls regularly putting the Niners behind the sticks and forcing them into longer drives against a Chiefs team that succeeded in moving the ball down the field quicker through explosive plays.

San Francisco also went just two for five in the red zone, dropped passes, sacks and penalties suffered in Kansas City territory too often leaving the 49ers trading field goals for touchdowns, an exchange that was always likely to end in them losing the battle.

Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo committed the most egregious red zone error, throwing a desperation heave up for grabs on third down after Kansas City had fumbled a punt to put the 49ers deep in Chiefs territory. Under heavy pressure, Garoppolo failed to see hot read Jeff Wilson Jr. wide open, with his pass intended for George Kittle easily picked off by Joshua Williams.

Wilson would likely have walked into the endzone, but Garoppolo’s decision prevented the 49ers from at least kicking a field goal and retaking the lead going into halftime instead of trailing by one.

Garoppolo’s struggles to get the ball out to his checkdown when San Francisco had the ball on Kansas City’s side of the 50 marked a frustrating theme for the 49ers, but those issues might not have mattered so much had the defense also not continually failed to execute in critical moments.

The 49ers gave up 35 yards on a screen pass on 3rd-and-20 that set the Chiefs for a score to go 28-16 up and later allowed Patrick Mahomes to complete a 57-yard bomb to Marquez Valdes-Scantling on 3rd-and-11, with Kansas City capping that drive with a touchdown to take a 35-23 lead almost instantly after San Francisco had cut the deficit to one score.

Kansas City’s final touchdown came as Juju Smith-Schuster was left wide open on third down to scamper 45 yards into the endzone.

Simply put, in the most important moments of a game they clearly had a chance to win, the 49ers did not do right, instead they made mistakes that, save for red-zone problems that have intermittently been an issue during his tenure, are not in character for Kyle Shanahan’s team, and they ultimately proved costly.

The 49ers hoped they drafted a comparable quarterback to Mahomes in Trey Lance but, following his season-ending injury, they will have to wait to find out if he is the kind of quarterback who can help them overcome failures of execution in other areas of the team.

Garoppolo is not that quarterback, and often he is part of the problem. With him under center, they are trying to thread a very thin needle to compete to go deep in the NFC, and they cannot afford the type and number of mistakes they made in Week 7.

In a weak NFC, the 49ers have the roster to contend for a Super Bowl, but at 3-4 their wiggle room is growing ever smaller and they will come nowhere close to achieving their ambitions if they cannot cut out the errors that doomed them against a team that looks certain to be contending for a Lombardi Trophy come season’s end.