49ers’ blowout loss to Packers went far beyond which players were missing
No Brock Purdy, no Nick Bosa and no Trent Williams.
Not that it mattered with the amount of mistakes the 49ers made Sunday, desecrating Lambeau Field with penalties, turnovers and missed tackles in a 38-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers.
The 49ers could have had all three of their big names as well as Charvarius Ward, Javon Hargrave, Talanoa Hufanga, Brandon Aiyuk and the 2023 vintage Christian McCaffrey in the lineup and been hard-pressed to even keep it close with the kind of performance they put forth in falling to 5-6.
It was a day the 49ers needed to be buttoned up, execution-oriented and mistake-free to beat a Packers team on their home field that is 8-3 and bound for the playoffs on a day in which they were without some of their most important players.
Instead, it was a clinic in how to take a game that could have been competitive and make it an embarrassing blowout loss — the third-worst point spread defeat since coach Kyle Shanahan arrived in 2017.
Quarterback Brandon Allen, subbing for the sore-shouldered Purdy, had an interception that went off the hands of Deebo Samuel and lost a fumble. He was 17 of 29 for 199 yards and a 3-yard touchdown pass to George Kittle. But given the circumstances, Purdy or No. 3 quarterback Josh Dobbs would have met a similar end result.
The 49ers simply couldn’t get out of their own way, which served as a magnifying glass into a team that is crippled by injuries but also seriously flawed as they trudge toward the end of a season where 9-8 might be a pipe dream.
“I’m not really concerned with how many guys we missed today because we didn’t play good enough,” 49ers Shanahan said. “But when are missing some guys, you have to be better and when you have those penalties and don’t stop the run and had those three turnovers in the second half, that’s how you get embarrassed.”
Penalties? How about nine for 77 yards. Previously error-free rookie guard Dominick Puni had three of them. A holding penalty on Eric Saubert erased an 82-yard kickoff return by Deebo Samuel to open the second half, and Ricky Pearsall had a 20-yard punt return erased on a holding call by Nick McCloud. The defense put 12 men on the field twice near the goal line — getting snookered by Green Bay’s substitution tactics that left Shanahan livid.
Stopping the run? Josh Jacobs had 91 yards by halftime and finished with 106 on 26 attempts with three touchdowns. The last time the 49ers gave up 100 yards in the regular season was 103 yards to quarterback Justin Fields of the Bears on Oct. 31, 2021. The last time a running back broke 100 was Jonathan Taylor of Indianapolis a week earlier. That was 55 games ago.
(Note: Aaron Jones of Green Bay had 108 yards against the 49ers in last year’s divisional round playoff game).
By the time the game was over, Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur had seized a big part of the Shanahan belief system — that rushing attempts equal success — as the Packers ran the ball 42 times for 169 yards and had a 36:43 to 23:17 advantage in time of possession.
The 49ers, playing from behind, ran the ball 16 times for 44 yards.
“We knew the challenge their running backs gave us going into the game and we just didn’t execute,” linebacker Fred Warner said.
The 49ers halted their own momentum at every turn and when the score was 17-7 at halftime it seemed as if it could be considerably worse. This wasn’t a 10 a.m. body clock time for the 49ers either, but rather an afternoon slot time that should have prevented their first-half sleep-walking session.
By the count of Fox statisticians, the 49ers had 10 missed tackles by the end of the first quarter, had 15 at halftime and reached 20 before the end of the game.
“That’s about as bad as it can get, probably the worst I’ve been a part of,” Warner said. “Even then, it was 17-7, a 10-point game, had everything in front of us. We just didn’t make the plays when we needed to.”
Warner will get no argument from Shanahan, who watched as the Packers converted all three 49ers second-half turnovers — Allen’s interception and lost fumble and a lost fumble by McCaffrey — into touchdowns.
“I thought we got out of our gaps a number of times, we had way too many missed tackles,” Shanahan said. “Them being able to control the clock in the first half was one of the worst I’ve been a part of. I thought we stepped it up in the second half, especially in the run game. It gave us an opportunity to get back in the game, and to have those three turnovers that led to 21 points, you combine that with the penalties, that’s how you get embarrassed like that.”
On a day when the 49ers needed their healthy stars to shine, it didn’t happen other than Kittle, who had six receptions for 82 yards and a touchdown. Samuel has been a rumor of late, and it was just his luck that his kickoff return that could have provided momentum went for naught.
Samuel caught one pass for 21 yards and didn’t run the ball from scrimmage. McCaffrey had 11 rushes for 31 yards with a long of nine and caught three passes for 37 yards as he works his way back from bilateral Achilles tendinitis.
Asked where the 49ers would find a way keep fighting, McCaffrey set his jaw.
“Three’s always a fight,” McCaffrey said. “Each day you’ve got to wake up, look yourself in the mirror and get better whether you win or lose. Speaking for me personally, that’s what I’m going to do.”
No doubt McCaffrey means it, but the 49ers have been well-meaning all season and it hasn’t done much to change an injury-riddled, mistake-filled season.
“We had all the confidence in the world with who we were going into the game with,” Warner said. “With the result of the game it’s going to look like we thought we didn’t have a chance. That wasn’t the case at all. We were confident. We came in ready to go . . . you’ve got take it on the chin, take it like a man and move on.”