INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The look in their eyes was so familiar, for them and for anybody who’s been around the 49ers the past few years. All those half-shrugs, tired voices, deep sighs, muted explanations, and expected recriminations were hardly revelatory.
In the wake of their stunning 27-24 collapse to the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday at SoFi Stadium, the 49ers did not need to sound a new alarm or search for new feelings.
“It’s unacceptable,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “We can’t do that.”
They’ve been through this. They’ve had to live through early-season stumbles before — in 2020, 2021, and 2022, as recent examples. They’ve fought through bad stretches. They’ve suffered a lost season or two. But the 49ers are now 1-2 and just fumbled away a game they absolutely, positively had every reason to win up to the last few minutes, save for a few titanic errors. Yes, the 49ers know what this means.
OK, so it’s going to be one of those seasons.
“We’re not making excuses for any loss,” Nick Bosa said. “But yeah, we’re in a hole now. So we’ve gotta dig it out.”
There are valid reasons for their early vulnerability. They’ve been without Christian McCaffrey all season and will be for at least a while longer. They didn’t have Deebo Samuel or George Kittle for this game. They got Trent Williams and Brandon Aiyuk back practicing just a few days before the regular-season opener. They played into February last season and lost the Super Bowl, and there are all sorts of statistics about what that can do a team in the following campaign.
But the 49ers still should be 2-1. And losing to a beat-up Rams squad after the 49ers jumped to a 14-0 lead and were up 24-14 deep into the fourth quarter, and getting an epic game from Jauan Jennings (11 receptions for 175 yards and three touchdowns) and an excellent performance from Brock Purdy (22 for 30 for 292 yards with those three TD passes and no interceptions) was the ultimate signal.
Nothing’s coming easy this season, because the 49ers aren’t good enough right now to make it anything other than hard.
Again, they’ve done this: In 2020, after their 2019 Super Bowl campaign, they started 2-3 in the midst of a massive injury wave and eventually succumbed to a 6-10 season. In 2021, they started 3-5 but won seven of their last 10 to finish 10-7 to make the playoffs and the NFC Championship Game. In 2022, they started 3-4 but finished the regular season on a 10-0 streak and got to the NFC Championship Game again.
The 49ers have shown weaknesses already this season. They also have 14 games left and pride themselves on their finishing kick.
“It’s definitely a rough start,” Bosa said. “But there’s a ton of football to be played. We’ve been through some tough stretches before. But we just have to stay together. We have the guys to do it.”
Do they, though? Will this all be fixed when McCaffrey, Samuel, and Kittle are back? When the defense is more put together under new coordinator Nick Sorensen instead of allowing a series of deep passes every week? When the special teams don’t fall apart at especially pivotal moments, as they did Sunday?
The benefit of blowing a game across the board means that no one aspect is under the microscope more than any other. The problem: That’s a lot of things to fix.
“We could’ve ended it on offense, defense, or special teams,” Coach Kyle Shanahan said. “When all three take their turns there at the end, those are the most frustrating ones.”
The bad stuff from the special teams: Jake Moody’s miss from 55 yards that could’ve sealed the game, giving up Xavier Smith’s 38-yard punt return in the final minute to set up the Rams’ game-winning field goal, and, maybe most crucially, letting the Rams convert a momentum-turning fake punt in the second quarter.
“That’s where I thought we had a chance to run away with it, not give them any hope,” Shanahan said of the fake punt. “And that gave them a lot of hope. Got them back in it.”
Add that to the 49ers surrendering a blocked punt that changed the tenor of that game early on against Minnesota, and the 49ers have a pretty serious emergency on their hands. Can it be fixed? Shanahan famously doesn’t care to immerse himself much in special teams. He just wants them to kick well and cover well and not blow the game for his offense and defense. Well, the special teams are helping to blow games. But I think it can be fixed. For now, this seems more like a run of bad miscues at the wrong moment. It’s probably an accumulation of small-sample-size bad luck. It had better be.
On offense, the most egregious moment came when Ronnie Bell, in the game only because of the injury absences, popped open deep on the 49ers’ final possession but absolutely clanked the reception on a well-thrown Purdy pass. A reception there and easy FG would’ve sealed up the victory. But nope.
Why was Bell, who had dropped at least one earlier pass Sunday and has dropped many over his short 49ers career, even in the game? The 49ers played him there over veteran Chris Conley, who isn’t a dropper, and rookie Jacob Cowings, who should get a chance to prove what he can do.
“We’re rotating a lot of guys in there,” Shanahan said. “He was the guy out there. Chris Conley got that early in the game. … Ronnie’s been having a helluva camp. He had a helluva week of practice. But he’s gotta come down with the catch.”
Is this fixable? Yes, it’ll be solved when Deebo is back, when the coaching staff has more faith in Cowing, when Ricky Pearsall heals up, and — I don’t want to be blunt, but oh, well — when Bell isn’t on the roster anymore. But it was an error — by the player and by the coaching staff that chose to put him out there — and it can’t be erased.
On defense, the 49ers held Matt Stafford without a completion through the first quarter, but after that, the 49ers’ secondary gave up a 48-yard pass interference penalty to set up the Rams’ second TD, a 32-yard reception to set up a field goal to make it 24-17, a 50-yard pass to Tutu Atwell to set up the tying TD, and a 25-yard pass-interference penalty to set up the game-winning kick.
“Got behind our defense too much today,” Shanahan said.
Last weekend, the 49ers gave up a mind-blowing 97-yard TD to Justin Jefferson. That’s a whole lot of roasting for a secondary that is filled with talented players. It seems like star cornerback Charvarius Ward is gutting through a leg injury and, like Sorensen, hasn’t quite synched up the deep coverage or figured out how to get the pass rush fully revved up.
Is this fixable? This is probably their most urgent non-injury issue right now. The 49ers should be fine Sunday at Levi’s Stadium against the woeful Patriots. But then they’ve got a very crucial stretch coming up: at home against the Arizona Cardinals, in Seattle on a Thursday night, and home games against the Chiefs and Cowboys before their Week 9 bye.
Can their defense hold it together to get the 49ers to 5-3 at that point? Or 4-4 at worst? That’s on Sorensen. That’s on assistant head coach Brandon Staley. That’s on Bosa, Warner, and all of their defensive stars. The 49ers leaned on their defense through troubled times in other years. Mostly, the defense answered the call.
This is going to be another one of those years. And I think the 49ers’ offense will be fine. But the 49ers always need their defense to lift all boats. If it can’t, this won’t just be a trying season for the 49ers. It could feel like an endless one.