Here We Go Again… Niners Put Up Embarrasing Performance

The Niners had a bad loss to a divisional opponent. Sounds familiar right?

SEATTLE, WA

The San Francisco 49ers got punked by the Seattle Seahawks. There is nothing more to it than that. Missed opportunities in the first half came back to bite them and they never had a chance in the second half. A team that has been picked to win the pathetic NFC West looked like a team that wanted no part trying to make it a game. Things that stood out to me during the game:

1. The offensive line protection was horrible. Numerous false starts, pressure on the quarterback, inexperience with 2 rookies starting, and inability to deal with the 12th man in Seattle doomed the Niners.
2. Inexcusable communication problems. The plays were coming in way too late from offensive coordinator Jimmy Raye down to the quarterbacks coach and then to Alex Smith. By the time the 49ers got to the line they were snapping the ball with less than 3 seconds on the play clock and had little to no time to make adjustments to Seattle’s defense.
3. Alex Smith played a horrible second half. He was clearly affected by the pressure. I am still confident he can get the job done if he is not put in bad situations (which I’ll get to in my next point) but he clearly missed many opportunities most notably the 4th down easy dump off to Moran Norris that would have given the Niners a TD. He missed many more open receivers in the 2nd half and appeared to completely be out of sync with Michael Crabtree.
4. The 49ers could not run the ball. They put themselves in too many 3rd and longs which Alex Smith could not bail them out of. The basis of the 49ers offense is the ability to establish and run the ball effectively with Frank Gore to set up the pass.
5. The secondary made two very bad mistakes. This foiled an otherwise solid game from the defense. These mistakes in coverage cost the Niners 14 points.

This is a very bad loss and clearly they will need a major turnaround next week if they even want to be competitive with the defending world champion New Orleans Saints. While the goal of winning 10 games still seems very possible despite the loss, it has been stunning defeats to division foes that have cost the 49ers there chance to win the division (which is the only way any team from the West is getting into the playoffs). I was counting on this team to sweep the division in order to make the rest of their schedule a lot less pressure packed as they would just need to win 4 of the remaining 10 games but here we go again. Will the 49ers tease us again with its playoff talk? Alex Smith and Mike Singletary have a lot of work to do.