SUNDAY SHOCKERS
49ers lose something worse than game in rout at hands of Dolphins
That wasn’t just bad. No, it was egregious — a catastrophic and comprehensive failure at every single level.
A coaching failure. A failure in the trenches with the offensive and defensive lines. The skill position players failed. Special teams failed.
And the starting quarterback and a starting cornerback? Oh my, how they failed.
San Francisco’s 43-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins on Sunday is the kind of loss that resonates — the kind of hapless performance that could be cited weeks, even years, from now. The kind of loss that rightfully makes everyone question their strongly held beliefs.
Yes, there have been plenty of bad losses over the last half- decade of 49ers football, but never did they come amid such high expectations. It might just be a oneweek blip. It might be foreboding of more bad play to come. We won’t know the real impact of this loss for quite some time.
But we can say this with impunity in the immediate aftermath: the 49ers have lost the benefit of the doubt.
Fans and media hacks like myself presumed that the Niners would be a good team in 2020. They played in the Super Bowl in February. Of course this squad had developed the infrastructure and depth necessary to continue to win, despite all the injuries this team sustained early in the season. Last year showed that this was an elite football organization once again, we said.
Perhaps it is. But the 49ers have to prove it going forward. And that’ll be tough, because San Francisco’s schedule between now and the middle of December is unquestionably the toughest in all of football.
Teams are allowed bad per
formances, but teams like the Niners are not afforded all-around implosions like Sunday’s. So many players on the Levi’s Stadium field looked like they were wearing red and gold only because they’d won a pregame prize.
One of them was their starting quarterback — their so-called “franchise quarterback” — Jimmy Garoppolo. He has probably received more praise and flack than he’s deserved in his 49ers career, but after Sunday, he no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt from the fans, media, or causal onlookers.
His benching at halftime was just, and while the demotion should not be permanent, the stain the contest will have on his reputation might be. After backup Nick Mullens’ horrendous performance last week against the Eagles, it became too easy to think that the Niners would return to excellence on offense with Garoppolo behind center.
But Mullens — who was inactive for this week’s contest — would have been a better option on Sunday. Garoppolo was inaccurate and jittery to start the game and threw two of the worst interceptions you’ll ever see at the end of the first half — fluttering balls into double coverage that defied physics and football logic.
Garoppolo was fulfilling the stereotype jealous out- of-staters incorrectly give us Californians: All looks, no substance. Credit for the worst performance of the not- exactly-young quarterback’s career will be given to his bum right ankle.
It’ll be alleged that he couldn’t drive the ball because he didn’t trust his back foot. But even if that’s the reason for the ducks he threw, it doesn’t fully explain his middling accuracy on short and intermediate routes and his foolhardy decisions to throw into the coverage that picked him off twice.
And if it does, Niners coach Kyle Shanahan has some explaining to do. He too has lost the benefit of the doubt, and that’s saying something.
Shanahan said after the game that he benched Garoppolo because San Francisco, trailing 30-7 at halftime, was going to have to throw the ball a bunch in the second half and Garoppolo didn’t look up to it.
Saying that a quarterback who cannot throw the ball effectively lacks value? That’s a real hot take, Kyle. But it was clear Shanahan knew Garoppolo fit that bill early — like in the NFC playoffs and Week 1, the head coach and play-caller took the ball out of his quarterback’s hands after a few series, turning him into the planet’s best-compensated hander- off of the ball.
Don’t get me wrong, backup C. J. Beathard didn’t fare much better, but you can’t divide by zero, so in comparison to Garoppolo, he looked great. Shanahan — in conjunction with defensive coordinator Robert Saleh — made the same mistake by sticking with cornerback Brian Allen on Sunday.
You probably don’t know who Allen is — he was a surprise call-up from the practice squad who picked up the start in the place of Ahkello Witherspoon. The Dolphins knew who he was, though. He used to play for them. And Miami quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, likely drooling in anticipation, ran a simple offense to start the game. The only play? Attack No. 48.
Who needs Fitzmagic when you can just do that with impunity?
I’ve never met Allen — and I have never played cornerback in the NFL — so I feel some remorse here, but the San Francisco newbie turned in some of the worst snaps at the position I’ve ever seen.
Eventually, Shanahan and Saleh did pull Allen, but the game was, again, effectively over. Witherspoon — who was active for the game — played better in his place, begging even more questions as to why Allen was playing at all.
Truth be told, the 49ers defense, on the whole, didn’t play all that poorly Sunday — at least in the first half when the game was still in the balance. But Allen played as poorly as you could possibly imagine and that was all that it took for the Niners to be blown out. A defense is only as strong as its weakest link, and that link straight-up disintegrated.
What have I missed? Special teams? Sure. What was Kevin White doing on that kick return in the first half?
The last time the Niners lost like this was in October 2014, when Jim Harbaugh took the Niners to Denver and left with a 25-point defeat and an uncanny feeling that San Francisco’s time as an elite team was over.
I don’t think Sunday’s game has the same implications, but I also thought the Niners would win Sunday. Yes, it’s a good thing this team built up such a strong reputation in 2019.
Because after Sunday, they don’t have much of it — if any — left.