Forty carries for 168 rushing yards. That is not a San Francisco 49ers stat taken from Sunday's game against the Atlanta Falcons. Although, it looks like one that should have belonged to Kyle Shanahan's offense, given their style of football. Instead, the Falcons accrued those punishing numbers, and the result was a 28-14 49ers loss and a drop to .500.
San Francisco had just 16 carries for 50 rushing yards, something reminiscent of what you might expect the defense to limit an opposing offense to.
"I think if we would have had [16 carries] in any other game, it would have been the same results," Shanahan said. "I think they controlled the ball very well. Then we got a little behind. I thought we needed to throw to catch up."
The 49ers fell into a 14-0 hole early, eventually tying the game only to watch the Falcons score 14 unanswered points to end the contest.
Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo made 41 pass attempts, completing 29 for 296 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. Even he recognizes that is uncharacteristic of what the 49ers typically want to accomplish.
"I think it starts with them getting the early lead on us," Garoppolo said after the game. "I think that obviously puts an offense in a difficult spot. But I think we were just behind the chains a decent amount. When you're in that position, you've got to ... I understand what Kyle's doing ... you've got to pass the ball in those situations.
Garoppolo added, "We've just got to get back to our style [of football], stay ahead of the chains, avoid third downs, convert third downs. That's our style."
Shanahan was also asked about his game management at the end of the fourth quarter. Down by 14 points with 10:42 left in the game, the 49ers offense ate up 8:08 worth of clock on a 16-play drive, coming away with no points in the effort. There seemed to be a lack of urgency as the team repeatedly allowed the play clock to tick down as the offense huddled after several plays.
"I just knew we had two more times with the ball," Shanahan explained. "And we did do a number of no-huddle plays. We also mixed it up, not doing it too. So we did both. The key is that you can't come up short on that, expecting to get the ball twice. And we're not going to panic when we feel like we have two more possessions, especially with three timeouts.
"But when you don't score on that ... that definitely backfires when you don't score on one of them."
