Turnovers and self-inflicted mistakes defined the San Francisco 49ers’ Week 7. Their win probability plummeted over 41% with four turnovers in plus territory.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked whether the team discussed corrections at halftime or after the game. Shanahan said:
“When you make a dumb mistake, you don’t need much discussion on how to correct it. You try not to do dumb things. At halftime we definitely stated that. We’ve got to protect the ball better, which I don’t necessarily look at that as
a dumb mistake.
Guys in this league are really good at the peanut punch and knocking that ball out, and they got us in two bad plays on that, and our guys have got to protect the ball. There’s no excuse on that. That’s the challenge of anyone who carries the ball in this league: how hard it is to hold it, and they got us twice on it, which is huge.
But, the biggest part was our defense stopped them and held them to fourth down and then we had a dumb jump offsides penalty, which yeah, it was talked about. I think everyone knows it was that way, so it didn’t have to be really overstated.
Then the second half, we had those two picks, and we had put ourselves in a hole, and we couldn’t have those. I think our guys know the mistakes we made. Anytime you have four turnovers to zero, it’s really hard to win in this league. I still think we could have overcame it, especially at the end with our defense getting those two stops, but you can’t overcome it when you throw a pick there on third down.”
The 49ers had a puncher’s chance in this game despite seemingly everything going wrong.
This season, there was no evidence Black would put the ball on the ground. If it were happening in practice, Black probably wouldn’t get more carries in Week 1 than Christian McCaffrey. You don’t expect your All-Pro tight end to cough up the ball, even in a two-possession game with a little more than a minute left.
You’re comfortable putting the ball in your quarterback’s hands because he came into Week 7 with a 1.2% interception rate, despite having the fourth-highest yards per attempt in the NFL. Brock Purdy threw as many interceptions against the Falcons as he did in the first six games. There’s little to correct in that regard.
