Furious Fan Reaction: "WTF DID I JUST WATCH?"
Last night made me absolutely sick. It made many of you sick. And as of this morning, I'm still utterly disgusted that we have a "1" in the "L column" now, and for many, many reasons. What we saw last night was a godforsaken atrocity. Not all of it was bad, but the bad we had? It was REALLY BAD. I mean REALLY, REALLY BAD. Last night was a kick in the nuts and punch in the stomach to fans, and I still can't help but ask "WTF?" over and over and over -- which is precisely what I found myself screaming towards the TV all last night watching piss-poor play after piss-poor play by so many players. Let's get into that now.
1. Receivers
Do they even deserve that title anymore? Dre Greenlaw had better hands than anyone lining up at WR last night. Samuel was productive, but even he bobbled several of his catches and dropped CRITICAL passes that would've given the team huge first down conversions. Every WR who touched the ball last night had one or more drops. It was absolutely ridiculous -- completely unacceptable. I sincerely hope to God that a) Sanders and Kittle aren't out long, and b) Hurd can return soon and make an impact. We had around 10 drops last night, and virtually all were of the absolutely inexcusable variety. One of them turned into a huge interception that led to points for Seattle, and nearly all the others blew golden opportunities for first downs. Speaking of opportunities...
2. Coaching
Credit to Saleh, honestly. He had his guys ready. They made a ton of plays last night. Shanahan and the offense though? If Staley and McGlinchey were getting manhandled by everyone they faced last night like this, does ANYone in their right mind believe they were holding up well in practice against our guys? Neither looked anywhere near ready to be on the field. The HC must do what's best for the team. At minimum, they should've given them help and eased them back in. Instead, they were left floundering all night while Jimmy got absolutely blasted repeatedly, eventually becoming so shell-shocked to the point of looking as erratic as he's ever been since coming here. Shanahan's baffling decision to not kick a field goal on a long 4th and 2 from the 32 yard line (with a kicker possessing a range of 55+) made absolutely zero sense. Nor did the downright repulsive decision to kneel down with roughly 30 seconds and a timeout left at halftime from the 25 yard line. Just an absolutely sickening lack of killer instinct and appalling distrust in your team. The last horrendous decision was to not call a single high percentage pass or running play late in OT to burn the clock. At minimum, Shanahan could've prevented a loss by making it an "either we win, or no one wins" situation. Furthermore, I did not see a single creative play design all night, and against a division rival, summing up all of the above to me screams out that this was no doubt an absolutely horrific performance by KS, and he is every bit responsible for the loss as some of the players.
3. Jimmy G
I give Jimmy credit for taking advantage of second and third chances to at least tie the game. But he has got to know when the play is over. That fumble returned for a TD was just one of a long line of reasons we lost this game. There's a time to try to make a play, and that wasn't it. Even though he got the game tied and also into position for the game-winner, Jimmy had his fair share of awful, awful moments. He was wildly inconsistent with his accuracy. He stared down receivers. He hesitated. He fumbled twice on plays he should've just protected the ball and lived to play another down. That was not championship caliber QB play. That was about as up and down of a game as it gets. For every two good plays, Jimmy had three bad ones. That's not going to cut it. It's definitely not all on him, but plain and simple, he HAS to be better than this for us to make any kind of a run.
4. Injuries:
We finally had a game where injuries impacted the W-L outcome. Does Gould make that kick? I don't know, but I'm a lot more comfortable with him doing it than a rookie UDFA. Dwelley, Celek, and Toilolo are easy covers for the speedy linebackers Seattle has, and definitely not going to get open against safeties. Apparently no one at WR can catch except Sanders and it's obvious why Jimmy trusts him more than anyone else on the roster. With DJ Jones, Blair, and even Thomas going down at one point, both our run defense and pass rush suffered mightily. We didn't have the rotational pieces to keep guys as fresh, and that became a massive disadvantage. Blair's injury didn't look good. Will Street become one of the activated players if Blair is out long term? We haven't even opened his practice window, so that has me wondering. I credit the guys who were in there still for playing their a** off, but we badly need our key guys to get healthy for at least the last quarter of the season and going into the playoffs.
Summary: DESPITE all of the above, this is a game we should've won and won in regulation. It never should've even come down to the shanked kick or the blown contain on RW at the end. The most infuriating part of this loss is that we didn't get beat by any spectacular plays by Seattle outside from a few typical RW moments that you always see from him. We mercilessly beat ourselves with game-changing mistakes on offense and terrible coaching decisions/mismanagement of the game. We couldn't get out of our own way to save our life, utterly embarrassed ourselves on national TV, and now all we can do is hope that we can recover from a gut-wrenching, emotionally draining loss and become better from it. We need every win we can get. This team needs to come out angry and determined to win next Sunday or serious doubts will start to set in, and that's a very dangerous thing, no matter who you are in the NFL.
[ Edited by OnTheClock on Nov 12, 2019 at 6:16 AM ]
