San Francisco 49ers: Was the St. Louis Rams Loss the Worst of the Harbaugh Era?

Was the San Francisco 49ers’ loss to the St. Louis Rams in Week 9 the worst team performance under Jim Harbaugh?

It certainly feels like it in the aftermath.  Rarely has a game been more frustrating to watch and more frustrating to analyze in the aftermath.  Since 2011, teams favored by 10 or more points, like the 49ers were against the Rams, had a 96-12-1 record coming into this week.  Teams favored by that much should be playing like 14-2 juggernauts, not struggling and ultimately falling short at the goal line.

Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

On the other hand, it’s not like the 49ers were blown out of the water.  While they should have been the one doing the stomping, it would have felt a lot different if either of San Francisco’s last two plays had gotten in the end zone. 

On both the Michael Crabtree catch and the Colin Kaepernick plunge, the referees could have easily ruled a 49er touchdown and a San Francisco win.  There wasn’t enough evidence to overturn either call, meaning whatever was called on the field would have stood.  Certainly, there’s some bad luck there.  Perhaps it’s just a run-of-the-mill loss, then, rather than an absolute worst performance.

The most painful loss, of course, is the loss to the Baltimore Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII, but it would be very hard to legitimately call that the worst performance the team has put together—they were on the goal line with a chance to win the game at the end.  No, we’re more interested in losses to bad teams, blowouts and general poor performances.

There’s no one answer to which game was the 49ers’ worst, but there are metrics we can use to try to grade these things.

Metric One: The Rams are Really Bad

One way to judge whether a loss was good or not is how good the opposing team was.  Losing to a team like the Seattle Seahawks last year is understandable, they’re very good!  Losing to a team like the Rams, however, is harder to justify.

By Football Outsider’s DVOA, the 2014 St. Louis Rams were, coming into this week, rated at -24.6% in DVOA.  That’s really bad—that’s 30th best in the league this year, though those numbers are obviously subject to change while the season goes on.  If your metric for determining worst performance is “a loss to a really bad team”, then DVOA backs this one up as being the worst loss under Harbaugh:

Opponent	Year	Week	Result	DVOA
St. Louis Rams	2014	9	L, 10-13	-24.6%
Arizona Cardinals	2011	14	L, 19-21	-19.7%
Chicago Bears	2014	2	L, 20-28	-9.0%
Arizona Cardinals	2014	3	L, 14-23	-1.0%
St. Louis Rams	2012	13	L, 13-16	1.5%

That’s right—while some of these numbers will change over time, as it stands now, three of San Francisco’s four losses to below average teams have happened in 2014.  You’ll get similar results by any other ranking system—the Rams, by almost any measure, are the worst team Harbaugh’s boys have lost to.  That’s not good.

Metric Two—At Least it Was Close?

The 49ers only lost by a field goal—one or two plays throughout the game going differently would have significantly changed the outcome of the game.

One way to judge performance, then, might be how the 49ers did compared to their expectations, as judged by the Vegas line coming in to the game.  The 49ers were 10-point favorites against St. Louis and lost by three, so they would have done 13 points worse than Vegas would have expected.  By that metric, the Rams game doesn’t finish first—in fact, it isn’t even in the top five:

Opponent	Year	Week	Result	Spread	Difference
New York Giants	2012	6	L, 3-26	-7	30
Indianapolis Colts	2013	3	L, 7-27	-10	30
Seattle Seahawks	2012	16	L, 13-42	+2	27
Seattle Seahawks	2013	2	L, 3-29	+7	18
Denver Broncos	2014	7	L, 17-42	+7	18
Minnesota Vikings	2012	3	L, 13-24	-7	18

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

The Rams game, by this metric, isn’t even the worst of the season—Denver’s demolition of the 49ers before the bye is a worse performance.  Considering the injuries the 49ers had coming into the game, that’s understandable.  The worst performances overall were the Colts game from last year during the weekend the Aldon Smith DUI news broke and one of Alex Smith’s worst games ever against the Giants in 2012.

This isn’t my favorite metric, because blowouts tend to spiral—once a game gets out of control, the final score tends to shoot upwards as everything fails.  The actual difference in quality between a 21-point loss and a 27-point loss is very different than the gap between a one-point loss and a six-point loss.

So, another way to look at games not being close is to identify the point where the 49ers’ realistic chances of winning were gone—how quickly did a game become a blowout?  By this metric, the Rams game isn’t bad at all—the 49ers were in it until the very last minute.  It’s the worst collapse under Harbaugh, and one of the worst possible, but it’s not a bad overall performance.

Let’s define “being in it” as having a greater than five percent chance to win according to Pro Football Reference’s Win Probability Model.  We can then record how much time was left on the clock after it slipped below five percent.  By that metric, again, the Rams game doesn’t sniff the top five worst performances for the team:

Opponent	Year	Week	Result	Time Left
Seattle Seahawks	2012	16	L, 13-42	40:23
Denver Broncos	2014	6	L, 17-42	26:55
New York Giants	2012	6	L, 3-26	23:32
Seattle Seahawks	2013	2	L, 3-29	15:00
Minnesota Vikings	2012	3	L, 13-14	9:15

Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

According to that metric, there’s only been three games in Harbaugh’s tenure that have been more or less over going into the fourth quarter, with the worst being the demolition up in Seattle at the end of the 2012 season.

So, the 49ers loss this week wasn’t bad because it was uncompetitive, it was bad because the opponent was bad.  What we need is a third metric, evaluating how well the team played independent of the actual win-loss record.

Metric Three—The Offense Was Horrible

Pro Football Focus grades every player on every play.  While they’re grades aren’t perfect by any means, they’re a very good metric for judging the individual performance of every player in every game.  By summing together the individual grades, we can see which game had the 49ers worst overall performances on the individual level.

Once again, the Rams game doesn’t appear in the bottom five, instead peaking at number seven:

Opponent	Year	Week	Result	PFF Grade
Denver Broncos	2014	7	L, 17-42	-34.5
Seattle Seahawks	2013	2	L, 3-29	-20.8
Indianapolis Colts	2013	3	L, 7-27	-14.2
Baltimore Ravens	2011	12	L, 6-16	-11.8
New York Giants	2012	6	L, 3-26	-11.4

Jack Dempsey/Associated Press

The Rams game doesn’t end up here because the 49ers’ defense was actually decently stout—while no one will be singing the praises of the defensive performance this week, they held the Rams to only 193 total yards, the lowest total of the season.  They forced a couple turnovers, and generally shut the Rams down.  Had the offense been even average, the 49ers should have won that game easily.

That’s the 49ers season this year in a nutshell—the defense is still a top-10 unit, despite missing NaVorro Bowman and Aldon Smith for the entire season so far, and many other key players for multiple games.  The pass rush needs a boost, but the defense has played well enough to get the 49ers into the playoffs.  The offense, on the other hand, has ranged from slightly above average to awful, depending on the week.

So what if we just look for the worst single-unit performances under Harbaugh?  Well, then, we get to see the Rams game once more:

Opponent	Year	Week	Result	Unit	PFF Grade
Seattle Seahawks	2013	2	L, 3-29	Offense	-26.9
St. Louis Rams	2014	9	L, 10-13	Offense	-20.8
Denver Broncos	2014	7	L, 17-42	Defense	-20.1
Baltimore Ravens	2011	12	L, 6-16	Offense	-15.5
Cincinnati Bengals	2011	3	W, 13-8	Offense	-14.6

That’s right—in back-to-back games this season, the 49ers have put up their worst defensive game under Harbaugh and their second-worst offensive game under Harbaugh.  That’s not good.

Considering the 2013 Seahawks rolled to the Super Bowl with one of the best defenses in NFL history, I’m willing to call last week’s performance the poorest offensive showing under Harbaugh.  Considering the quality of the opponent, the performance the 49ers put up against the Rams was simply inexcusable.

So, was this the worst team performance under Harbaugh?  I’m inclined to say no.  While it hurts the most because it’s the most recent, the 49ers have laid eggs before.  I think, subjectively, I would put the 2013 loss to the Colts as the worst, followed by the 2012 regular season loss to the Giants.  Heck, I’d consider the 2012 tie with the Rams as a worse game than this most recent one.

Opponent	Year	Week	Result
Indianapolis Colts	2013	3	L, 7-27
St. Louis Rams	2012	10	T, 24-24
New York Giants	2012	6	L, 3-26
St. Louis Rams	2014	9	L, 10-13
Chicago Bears	2014	2	L, 20-28

It can’t be the worst performance, because the defense was stout.  As far as worst offensive performances, however, this takes the cake by a wide margin.  This was an absolutely pathetic showing, with no one escaping blame.  The right side of the offensive line didn’t protect, Colin Kaepernick didn’t read the defense, Michael Crabtree dropped two passes and Frank Gore didn’t generate a ground game.  No one escapes blame for this.

All the 49ers can do now is regroup and hope they can salvage something, probably a wild-card berth, from this season.  The defense is ready.  The offense needs to step up.

Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the San Francisco 49ers.  Follow him @BryKno on twitter.