Seahawks 37, 49ers 27

Let’s all pretend this picture sums up what happened on the field [Joe Nicholson/USA Today]

While the end score was closer than the game ended up being, our backup-led flourish in the fourth pointed to all the issues we had in the initial three stanzas. Despite a banged up secondary and a pass rush which had been largely nonexistent until this point, the Seahawks bottled up our offense in the third quarter while theirs scored on their first three possessions of the second half.

By the time a gimpy Jimmy G went back to the locker room—joined shortly by a gimpy Fred Warner and a gimpy George Kittle—the score was 30-7. Given the injury news that came down the pipe Monday and the first of what could be multiple trades before the deadline later today, the focus of the previews and recaps will start to resemble what is now clearly the focus of the rest of the 49ers’ season: the future.

OFFENSE

Without Deebo’s ability to create with the ball and stretch out defenses horizontally, there were worries that we’d have issues against a team that—for all their poor statistics—was typically stout against the run. Those fears proved legitimate.

Faced with loaded boxes and zero threat of the passing game, the Seahawks held our rushing attack to 52 yards on 22 carries (2.4 ypc) and forced Garoppolo into dropback passing situations. Jimmy G—seemingly in an effort to extend our many questions about him indefinitely—saw his accuracy waver while the offensive line, which allowed three sacks to a team that had only nine on the year entering the game, struggled to pick up the Seahawks’ blitzes once they started dialing them up in the second half.

Missed opportunities: The Niners defense started strong and the offense was finding creases early in the game, but a failure to generate points on two trips inside the Seattle forty was an ominous sign of things to come.

Facing a 3rd & four from the plus 37 on our very first drive, we called a wildcat run that got stuffed for a loss of three. I personally hate the wildcat, and while this was clearly an attempt to gain enough yardage to potentially go for it on the ensuing fourth down—an overall management strategy that I agree with—I’d have preferred to show a pass set and run rather than handoff the ball out of the most run-obvious set in football. As discussed before, part of the benefit of being more aggressive on fourth down is the ability to run or pass on third downs, but by taking out the passing threat, we lost that element of surprise. The resulting loss decided the fourth down call for us and we had to punt. 

On the next drive, after we lucked out on a fumble recovery that bounced out of bounds, we had a 3rd & five from the Seattle 20 when Shanahan called an empty set double high-low return concept. With third and manageable against a team that prefers to play zone coverage, this is a good, safe call that clears out space, fakes a common high-low look, and—with the return tag on Kittle—allows for a low-risk pass attempt at the sticks. Theoretically. While Kittle could have ran the route flatter to the LOS, Garoppolo’s pass was so late and so behind him that what should have been at worst an incomplete somehow became a pick.

The squandered opportunities continued into the second half as well. While it seemed like we did absolutely nothing with our six plays in the third (that’s right, we only had six plays for net one yard in the third. If that’s not the ultimate game flow loss, I don’t know what is), the reverse Shanahan dialed up to Aiyuk was totally the right call. Unfortunately, the execution was lacking.

This is what Aiyuk was looking at when the pitch was botched.

Considering Aiyuk had to stop, pick up the ball, but still ran for 14 yards (for a gain of 5) it’s pretty clear how open this play was. With a proper pitch he was a single tackler away from a potential house call, a Niners lead, and a dangerous end around element that could open up inside running lanes. Alas, as was typically the case today, it didn’t turn out as expected and Jimmy was sacked on the next play.

It’s never good to squander scoring opportunities. It’s worse when you squander them while playing against one of the top offenses in football.

DJ Reed (sad face emoji): DJ Reed, former 49er dime back who was swooped up off waivers when the Niners cut him post-injury during training camp, was activated from the practice squad for this matchup and was highly disruptive from his nickel corner spot. 

When the Seahawks leaned into blitzing, it was actually Reed who was their pass rush catalyst—coming off the edge on cat blitzes to end both of the Niners’ third quarter possessions. On the first third down he and Bobby Wagner combined to pancake Mike McGlinchey before Wagner tallied the sack. On the second, he came free unblocked off the edge, pushing Garoppolo into the waiting hands of Alton Robinson. 

After a day where Reed also recorded the pick on Garoppolo and broke up two passes, it’s hard to imagine he won’t be the Seahawks’ starting nickel back moving forward. At least Damontre Moore—the other player we didn’t retain who now plays for the Seahawks at what has become a major position of need—didn’t do much in this game. Also, he just got suspended six games for PEDs. So we’ll count that one as a wash.

Second half shut down: While the first half was ugly and had plenty of missed opportunities, the Niners offense actually moved the ball okay. But in the second half the Seahawks turned up the blitzes and the result was two three-and-outs sandwiching a fumbled kickoff return that effectively put the game out of reach.

Part of the problem was likely that the Niners didn’t see it coming. After the game Trent Williams nearly admitted as much, saying that they didn’t expect them to “heat it up” as much without Adams. Thus the play calls, which inherently have hot routes, were likely made in anticipation of less blitzing and more time to pass. Neither of the third down sacks appeared to have a receiver open early so it’s hard to put either on Jimmy. Then again, neither of the blitzes had a numbers advantage either (aka we had enough men to block them). Shanahan could have dialed up options with quicker hitters on those 3rd & shorts, but I don’t think any play callers are expecting to to have to get the ball out under two seconds when they have five blocking five. Considering the issues we’ve had on blitz pickups, perhaps it’s something we should start expecting—even if that shouldn’t be the case.

Oddly Quiet Kittle: For a defense missing its star hybrid safety, with linebackers and safeties who have some vulnerabilities in coverage, it was an oddly quiet game from our All-Pro tight end. A would-be first down hit off one of his hands early on what seemed like some combination of an inaccurate throw and the expectation that Kittle settle a yard to the left of where he did. And of course there was the pick thrown his way.

A short week means I won’t be able to look at the coaches film to see what happened, but I would have expected a much higher level of involvement given the injury to Deebo and the weaknesses in Seattle’s zone coverage. 

Au Revoir 2020: Jimmy Garoppolo, George Kittle, and Tevin Coleman all exited the game with injuries. Coleman reaggravated his injured knee but the jury’s out on the severity of it. Jimmy G re-sprained his ankle and will be out a minimum of six weeks—longer if he requires surgery. Kittle is out eight weeks with a broken bone in his foot. While the team has fought admirably to this point, we’re about to have $80M of a $200M cap on injured reserve and that doesn’t include Kwon Alexander—whose $13M cap hit was taken off IR just in time to get traded on Monday—or the $7M in salaries on the PUP List.

So… half of our entire salary cap. Cool.

DEFENSE

I’m not gonna critique this defensive performance too much. Obviously allowing 37 points isn’t a winning formula for any football team, but this is a unit that—due to our offense stalling out and Dante Pettis fumbling the kickoff—had to play 15 straight snaps over a 7+ minute period against one of the top offenses in football. Again, game flow. We were able to get away with it at times last year since we weren’t missing half our dudes. This year, we’re only winning games against good teams with complementary football, and we just didn’t have that this game.

Coming in hot: We confused the Seahawks’ pass protection early, forcing them into a game script where they became unsure of themselves and their offensive line and leaned back on an ineffective running game. Unfortunately, that only lasted for the first two series. After Garoppolo’s interception tanked another opportunity for points, the Seahawks scored on five of the next six drives—four of those scores were touchdowns.

While our defensive line did a good job maintaining gap integrity in the running game—holding DeeJay Dallas to 41 yards on 2.3 ypc and limiting Wilson to 6 carries for 23 yards—our pass rush petered out rather quickly. Kerry Hyder was his normally dependable self—bringing down Wilson for one sack and forcing a throwaway when he nearly got him for another—and Jordan Willis looked pretty solid for his first game with the Niners. But it wasn’t nearly enough. It was rare that we got any kind of pressure without sending extra men, and every time we sent extra guys we were providing less support in coverage.

Ford and Blair are (theoretically) returning at some point this season and having either/both will be a huge boost. Until then, this is likely just how it goes against teams with high-level passing attacks: try to be efficient and generate negatives when we blitz then maintain gap integrity and crowd the QB’s space when we send four. It’s not ideal, but—given our injuries at the position—I’m not sure what else we can do schematically against a team that really excels through the air. 

Moseley on Metcalf: If there’s one thing Emmanuel Moseley has struggled with in his two-ish years as a starting corner it’s guarding big wideouts who are also vertical threats. We saw it last year with Julio Jones—the last of the big fast freak wideouts of yore—and DeAndre Hopkins—who may only be 6-1 but is a powerful 212 pounds and has elite tracking ability. While it would be premature to put DK Metcalf on the level of those two, his 6-4 229-pound frame and 4.3 speed—in combination with Wilson’s deep ball acumen and pinpoint accuracy—present problems for the 5-11 190-pound Moseley.

Metcalf is the perfect fit for the Seahawks offense because he has the size/speed combo to excel at vertical routes and then—after he’s forced a big cushion—just needs to run slants, back shoulder equivalents, and square-in routes off of that vertical stem to find open space. This isn’t to diminish what Metcalf has accomplished. He is damn good at those two things. And while Moseley is a good athlete, his lack of burner speed and length means he has to play more conservative on the deep balls. While he ended up 50/50 on nine routes—getting beat by a half step and a perfect throw on one early before knocking away a would-be touchdown late—the cushion he allowed opened up some opportunities for Metcalf underneath while he struggled taking away inside leverage while pressing a handful of slants.

There’s nothing Moseley can do about the physical advantages some of these wideouts will have over him, but that doesn’t mean he lacks the ceiling to improve. He’s very young and known for his work ethic and intelligence. If he can get better at staying high-shoulder and widening vertical routes towards the sideline that would simultaneously diminish the potential for breaking routes off of those vertical stems. And if he were less worried about getting beat by those verticals then perhaps he could more regularly deny inside releases on slant routes while in press. And of course, if our pass rush was more active he wouldn’t have to cover nearly as long. Despite a rough outing, I continue to be very bullish on Moseley, but as we approach teams with elite wideouts, it will be interesting to see if the Niners do more shadow work with Verrett/Sherman.

Misc: Marcell Harris seemed to play well in this game, rarely being targeted in coverage and closing hard and violently on underneath passes. If there was a knock on his game it’s that he was surprisingly ineffective as a pass rusher... Fred Warner was knocked out of the game in the second half but returned. It was apparently a stinger. Which, thank god, because he’s the one dude who can’t afford to lose on D.

Trade Deadline!?!?!? is today at 1PM (aka before many of you will read this). While our chances of being sellers and trying to load up for the upcoming draft have greatly increased in the past 48 hours, we’ll see if anything comes from it this late in the game.

Go Niners 👍🏈