This piece originally appeared in our twice-weekly sports newsletter The Dime. Sign up here to receive this and other email newsletters from The Standard.
With the 49ers down to their final shot Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, Brock Purdy wasn’t on the field.
Neither was George Kittle. Or Jauan Jennings. Or Brandon Aiyuk.
When the defense came up with back-to-back stops inside of five minutes to play, Nick Bosa wasn’t out there, either.
The 49ers are a team built on star power. These players are their foundation, and when they started to go down with injuries last year, the season slipped away.
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This season, the injuries are back, but the gut-wrenching, late collapses aren’t. In each of the 49ers’ first three games, Kyle Shanahan’s squad has used little-known and often inexperienced backups in the place of a key pillar. And in each game, those backups have delivered game-saving plays that have turned down-to-the-wire matchups into confidence-building victories.
The battered, banged up, and beaten down 49ers are 3-0 and sitting atop the NFC West.
Against the Cardinals, a team that shredded a depleted 49ers 47-24 in the 2024 regular-season finale, backup quarterback Mac Jones passed for 284 yards and completed five passes on the final offensive drive that set up Eddy Piñeiro’s game-winning field goal.
The difference between last year’s and this year’s 49ers? The backups, at least so far, are really good.
In Week 1, Jake Tonges entered without an NFL reception to his name and left with a game-winning touchdown catch.
In Week 2, Purdy’s toe injury forced the starter to the sideline, and Jones delivered three touchdown passes including one to another second-string tight end, Luke Farrell.
On Sunday against Arizona, field goal kicker Eddy Piñeiro was a perfect 3 for 3 and drilled the walk-off winner with the type of accurate strike that often evaded Jake Moody.
To set up Piñeiro’s 35-yarder, Tonges and receivers Skyy Moore and Kendrick Bourne all came up with receptions of at least 10 yards. For the 49ers to secure that final possession, a defense that relied on rookies Mykel Williams, Upton Stout, and Marques Sigle forced a punt inside of two minutes.
These are the types of contributions that were lacking last season, when Brandon Allen and Josh Dobbs went 0-2 in place of Purdy, when Christian McCaffrey’s absence loomed over every close loss, and when the 49ers cycled through kickers following Moody’s high-ankle sprain.
It’s only three weeks, but the 49ers are finding ways to win in every way that they lost last season.
Shanahan and his team should be encouraged, but the NFL is unforgiving. Jones banged up his knee in the second half. Bosa will have an MRI on Monday to determine the severity of his knee injury. And there’s no guarantee that Kittle and Aiyuk will be ready to be activated as soon as they’re eligible in the next month.
The 49ers know they won’t win every one-score game when stars are standing on the sidelines. But so far, they’ve found credible replacements, which is more than they could say a year ago.