McDonald: 49ers win over Jaguars even more impressive than beating Rams
The 49ers are a .500 team in record only. While their 5-5 record isn’t going to be the cause for any parades, a 30-10 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday ranks as the high point of the season and is the best indication yet their hopes and dreams of doing something special remain intact.
Yes, it was even more impressive than their 31-10 win over the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night.
The Jaguars are nothing special, and in fact looked very much like a 2-8 team going nowhere. So what makes winning a game you’re supposed to win something extraordinary?
Taking care of business.
If there is such a thing as a trap game, this one was it.
The 49ers were coming off a game in which they saved their season on a Monday night before a national television audience. They traveled cross country on a short week for a 10 a.m. game according to their own body clocks.
Jacksonville is not a strong opponent, but the Jaguars came in with the reputation of being good defensively against the run. And the 49ers, when they can’t run, become an ordinary team.
I was a little skeptical about the 49ers’ dismantling the Rams, wondering if it was sustainable. Coach Kyle Shanahan has owned Sean McVay in head-to-head matchups and the Rams were as bad as the 49ers were good that night. The 49ers were desperate and played like it.
Let’s see them do it again, this time without that same sense of desperation and against a team they are expected to beat.
From the looks of it, the Jaguars looked at what the 49ers faced in terms of the short week and making the long trip and were exhausted by the idea of it.
Instead, the 49ers were the fresh team, and they took it to the Jaguars from the outset with a 20-play, 87-yard drive that resulted only in a field goal — a 20-yard kick from Robbie Gould — but consumed 13:05 of the first quarter.
The 49ers forced a three-and-out . . . then they scored a touchdown . . then they forced a turnover courtesy of Josh Norman. . . then it was 20-3 at halftime and the game was over.
Shanahan, as he does when he’s at his best, found different ways against the Jaguars to accomplish what his offense did against the Rams.
Instead of going shotgun with little to no play-action, Shanahan had Jimmy Garoppolo under center on more than half the snaps. Without Elijah Mitchell, out after finger surgery, he employed a backfield of Jeff Wilson (19 carries, 50 yards), Trey Sermon (10 carries, 32 yards) and of course Deebo Samuel (eight carries, 79 yards).
The 49ers attacked in a completely different manner and accomplished an identical result. They ran it 44 times against the Rams, 42 against the Jaguars.
Defensively, the 49ers never allowed Jacksonville to get in a rhythm — which is not surprising considering that the Jaguars had the ball for only 21:38 of the 60 minutes. Fresh and aggressive, the 49ers’ defense made sure rookie quarterback Trevor Lawrence never got on track.
Safety Jimmie Ward and tight end George Kittle said during the week there would be no chance of a letdown after the Rams win. The 49ers had already lost enough this season and no one wanted to go back to feeling the way they did after their Week 9 debacle against Arizona.
But there’s saying something during the week, and then there’s showing you mean it on Sunday. That’s exactly what the 49ers did.
“I get how it looks, but I don’t think it was very hard to get the guys’ attention and ready to play,” Shanahan said. “We knew how it felt losing games. We know how much better it felt (beating) the Rams and we didn’t want that to end today.”
Although all the 49ers did was get even in terms of won-loss record, they look ahead of the game when it comes to swagger and confidence.
“I think it’s just coming together right at the right time,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “We’re getting to that back half of the season and we’re getting hot. That’s just who we are though. I think all along we’ve been trying to find that identity, trying to find ourselves and it’s starting to show through.”
It helps that the 49ers best players happen to be playing their best football.
Warner, who conceded during the week he hadn’t been up to par, is back in form. He had seven tackles and a fumble recovery. Nick Bosa, who had two sacks and will be one of the first names mentioned in any conversations about the NFL Defensive Player of the Year, appears unblockable. Kittle has scored touchdowns in three straight games for the first time in his career.
As for Garoppolo, other than somehow missing a wide-open Wilson for an easy touchdown on the opening drive, he continues to strike surgically in the middle of the field. He was 16 of 22 for 176 yards and touchdowns to Kittle and Brandon Aiyuk. The calls for Trey Lance, who actually got in some late-game work, have decreased as it appears Shanahan might actually know what he’s doing after all.
The offense leans run-heavy, but is far more diversified than a month ago. With Kittle having re-established himself as one of the NFL’s top tight ends and Aiyuk the top target in the passing game Sunday, the 49ers can attack in different directions rather than assume Samuel has to do all the heavy lifting.
The 49ers may be as good as advertised heading into Week 1. It just took them a while to get there.