The San Francisco 49ers fell short in a 26-21 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars over the weekend, dropping their first game of the season in an error-filled afternoon.
San Francisco had three turnovers, was down 12 at one point, and had struggles in the red zone, but still had a chance to win on Sunday before a late fumble killed its chances.
With Ricky Pearsall and Jauan Jennings banged up both before and during the game, Christian McCaffrey had a day as a receiver, catching six passes for 92 yards
and a touchdown, while commanding 11 targets.
McCaffrey has been quite active as a receiver to start the year. Interestingly enough, he has more receiving yards (305) than rushing yards (225), despite averaging over 17 carries per game. That’s because he’s rushed for a career-low 3.3 yards per attempt to start the season, while not having a single play of 20+ yards on the ground.
On Sunday, McCaffrey had just 49 rushing yards on 17 carries, which was his worst output of the season, while the team totaled just 83 yards on 24 attempts.
What was the issue for the 49ers against the Jaguars?
“Just not enough explosives really,” head coach Kyle Shanahan acknowledged after the game. “I mean, we’re getting extremely heavy two-shell defenses, and I would’ve thought we would’ve done better today because you get heavy two-shell defenses, you can’t get a big explosive run, usually it comes down to third down. That’s what we struggled at the week before, but I thought we did real well on third down today which should have kept us out there and kept us going. That’s what was so frustrating with the turnovers that we had.”
“If you don’t have any run over 20 yards on the year and you don’t have any explosive run in that game, I don’t think we got any over 11 yards, I think,” Shanahan followed up on Monday. “You’re going to have that yards per carry when it’s like that. We’ve got to break a big one. And that entails everyone. That includes the play calls, that includes guys blocking on the perimeter, includes guys blocking inside and it includes our runners creating.”
The 49ers aren’t necessarily having many negative plays; they’re just not creating chunk yardage on the ground, putting more stress on the passing game to execute. Interestingly, it feels like the 49ers’ offensive line unit is better equipped to pass protect currently, as there have been too many miscues in the run game, be it the line, the tight ends, or even receivers not knowing assignments.
Red zone rushing has been a big issue for the 49ers as well. Through four games, Christian McCaffrey has 16 rush attempts for just 10 yards. On one of his early carries, it felt like there was a hole for a major score, had there not been a blocking mishap. Instead, San Francisco settled for a field goal, costing them extra points.
What is McCaffrey seeing in the red zone?
“I think overall, we’re close,” the running back said. “I think we have to gel a little bit better together, but we are close. This is a tight, tight league and the room for error is very slim, so all the mistakes are correctable and there’s little things here and there to improve. Once we start rolling, we can start to get it going again. I’m excited for that.”
The 49ers have much to figure out on the ground as they face the Los Angeles Rams on the road for Thursday Night Football this week. Los Angeles has a good run defense so far, ranking 10th with just 98.5 rush yards allowed per game and sixth with 3.9 yards per carry allowed. It’ll be a tough matchup for San Francisco, especially if things don’t work out on the ground.
