(By Daisy Barringer)
I’ve got nothing. The 49ers performance yesterday was so lackluster and so disappointing and just so AWFUL that being forced to think about it long enough to write this feels like a punishment. Except I’m not the one who deserves to be punished. They are. Because they SUCKED. Sorry, Mom. I know I'm not allowed to say “suck” but that is the only word that describes the fiasco that was the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
The sad thing is that the defense had a fairly decent game, but none of that matters because of the pathetic showing by the offense. Or lack thereof. The 49ers had just 46 net passing yards — that’s their fewest since Alex Smith’s first NFL start in 2005. Kaepernick who was 11-for-22 and 91 yards was sacked SIX times. SIX. I hope every single member of the offensive line went up to him and personally apologized at the end of the game. SIX!!!!
That being said, I also hope Kaepernick apologized to the team since he had the perfect opportunity to get the 49ers into field goal range at the end of the game, but instead threw a interception to end it with 10-9 loss.
So now the 49ers are 6-3. We’re 2 ½ games behind the Seahawks and only one game ahead of the Cardinals. Even worse? We’ve only beat two teams with a winning record all season (Green Bay and Arizona) and I can’t see any way in which, unless something drastically changes, we fly to New Orleans and beat the Saints next weekend.
What I’m trying to say is... I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the rest of the 49ers season. I can handle a loss. I can watch a loss and still believe. But that loss? In which the 49ers looked totally flat and only managed to score three field goals? Doesn’t leave a lot for a girl to look forward to.
Of course, it wasn’t just the execution that was entirely lacking; it was also the play calling. Yes, the Panthers have the No. 2 run defense in the NFL, but Frank Gore was actually the only person on offense getting any yards. But despite the fact that he was averaging over 5 yards per carry, but he was only given the ball 16 times.
To be fair, I imagine the 49ers thought they were going to be able to air the ball out more. But then Vernon Davis left the game with a concussion and Kaepernick, who has come to depend on Davis, had to find new people to throw to. And even though Manningham, who played for the first time this season, had three catches for 30 yards, he also dropped two passes.
The biggest bummer of the game? (Besides the fact that we lost...) So many injuries.
Vernon Davis: Concussion.
Eric Reid: Concussion. His second of the season.
Garrett Celek: Hamstring. That’s two tight ends with injuries, for those who are counting.
Ray McDonald: Ankle.
Harbaugh is notoriously quiet about updates on players, but due to concussion protocols, we won’t know if Davis and Reid are cleared to play until next Saturday. Fingers crossed they’re both doing okay, although it definitely makes me worried that Eric Reid — who continues to be my new favorite player — has now had two concussions this season. Pretty brutal for a rookie who’s been playing so well.
Injuries aside, one has to wonder exactly what went so very, very wrong with the offense. It would be easy to blame it on the loss of Davis, but I don’t feel like they were really playing that well before he exited the game. Regardless, the offensive line was just terrible. Embarrassingly so. Perhaps the bye week was too much of a break and they just couldn’t find their rhythm? Whatever it was, they have six days to fix it. I predicted a win against Carolina and a loss against the Saints, so all they have to do is flip that around to stay on track and in the hunt for a wild card spot.
Sure, they don’t look like playoff contenders, but on any given Sunday (And yes, that is my life mantra. How else does one survive football season?)
Other highlights of the game included my walking by the SFPD officer who, if you recall, had lied to me and told me he was arresting the girl who assaulted me. He’s infinitely recognizable because he seriously looks like a stripper with his long hair, short-sleeved uniform, and arms covered in tats. But I’m trying to be mature, so when I walked by him, I didn’t give him a second look. He, however, did a full double take and stared me down. Okay fine, I might have thrown my arms up and said, “WHAT?”
Stadium security continues to be abysmal. See, I now try to sneak “contraband” into every game, just to see if I can, and this week I packed a lone can of PBR. Amazingly, my bag was searched for the first time ever and the security guy found it. “Nice work!” I congratulated him. “You’re the first person to find something on me all season.”
“Not on my watch,” he stated proudly, as he tossed the PBR into the garbage.
And then he let me pass by, forgetting to run the metal detector wand over my body.
At least they checked my ticket?
And nothing changed with the fans. I didn’t see a lot of fights, but we weren’t even three minutes into the first quarter when a third person in my section used the p-u-s-s-y word. It’s almost as though someone issued a challenge for every single person to say it before the game was over. Okay fine, after the third person said it, I did, in fact, issue that challenge to everyone around me. I was joking. They took me literally. Sorry to the parents of the 10-year-old boy in front of me. Although from what I can tell with kids these days, he’d probably heard that word plenty of times before.
All in all, a bummer of a game. It’s even more annoying because I went to graduate school in North Carolina, so I have a whole slew of Panthers-fan friends. Needless to say, you won’t find me on Facebook for the next couple of days. They may be Southern, but they’ll still find a way to make it sting. Bless their expansion-team loving hearts.
In short: Our offense sucked. Our defense was decent. The coaching was bad. And we totally deserved to lose. Sometimes football is The Worst. The End.