NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE 49ers gain traction in NFC playoff race with another good showing vs. Jaguars
The 49ers did something Sunday in Jacksonville they haven’t done all season.
They put together strong performances in back to back games, throttling the struggling Jaguars 30-10 less than a week after their triumphant victory over the Rams on Monday night. It marks the 49ers’ first winning streak since the first two weeks of the season, when they battled to hang on for victories against the sub
.500 Lions and Eagles in mediocre performances. Those foreshadowed the team’s oncoming struggles, as San Francisco lost five of six games.
The Jaguars, who fell to 2-8 Sunday, played like one of the worst teams in the NFL. But the more important point from the 49ers’ view: they came out focused, with energy, and didn’t let the home team gather steam after a cross-country trip on a short week.
They have a .500 record to show for it for the first time since September, improving to 5-5.
Tight end George Kittle made an interesting point to reporters after the game, noting the team’s struggles had been over-analyzed and dissected during its downturn from weeks 3 to 9. It took a few simple fixes to get back on the winning track, particularly after the low-point loss against Arizona and backup quarterback Colt Mccoy earlier this month.
“We’re not turning the ball over,” Kittle said. “We sat here after the Arizona game, bear-in-the-building type of stuff, everyone trying to solve all the problems, and we literally said, ‘We got to stop turning the ball over, we need to get a couple turnovers on defense or special teams,’ and that’s all we’ve done the last two weeks.”
The 49ers didn’t turn the ball against the Rams or Sunday in Jacksonville. And they converted 14 of 26 tries on
third down (54%) after going 14 of 56 (25 percent) their previous five games. They also took the ball away twice against the Rams, both leading to touchdowns, and recovered a fumble caused by Josh Norman on Sunday leading to the team’s first trip to
the end zone.
Said Jimmy Garoppolo: “I think these past 14 days have, I don’t want to say changed our team, but we’re definitely moving in the right direction now,
I’ll say. We just got to keep going.”
For head coach Kyle Shanahan, who modeled this year’s club after the
2019 Super Bowl team, that’s the most important thing. That team took care of business against bad teams all season. The issue with this year’s squad, which returns a lot of the same players, is that it lost games it should have won, like against the Colts and Cardinals on its home field.