Was Niners' loss to Rams mystifying and mortifying?

It wasn’t so much who was missing. A great team, even a very good team, overcomes the loss of star players through injuries, inequities, bad breaks, and surprises—very tricky of the Rams to pull off that fake punt. 

Which the San Francisco 49ers did not. Which is why they are not a great team.

Yes, the Niners were without Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel and George Kittle, but they did have a 14-0 lead early on, and then a 10-point lead with 6 ½ minutes to go.

And they were playing the Rams in Los Angeles where they never lose—at least more than the once they did in the playoffs a few years ago. And all the fans, as you could tell on television,  the red-shirts and jerseys and unstopping cheers at So-Fi Stadium, as always the majority of the fans were cheering for San Francisco.

Despite all this, the previously winless Rams on a 37-yard field goal with two seconds remaining by former Stanford kicker, Josh Karty, beat the 49ers 27-24. 

This was more mortifying than mystifying, perhaps. Teams losing Super Bowls, as did the Niners in February,  seem to disintegrate the following season. That doesn’t mean the Niners are doomed, but they are 1-2. No excuses even with the big injuries.

Niners coach Kyle Shanahan seemed as stunned as anybody. 

“There were a number of times we could have put them away,” said Shanahan on the Niners post-game telecast. “It was a frustrating game. We kicked a field goal and they came right back with a field goal.” 

In trying to raise the spirits of the 49ers faithful, Shanahan pointed out that the 49ers had a three-game losing streak last year and as we know they made it to the Super Bowl. And as we also know they didn’t win the Super Bowl. It is a tough league, the NFL, and while it takes a team a long time to climb to the top, it can tumble into the depths oh so quickly. That doesn’t mean the Niners are headed for a decline. But the little things that go right when a team is successful seem to go wrong when the defeats begin to mount. 

That doesn’t mean the Niners are doomed, and they could well recover from this inglorious start to the season, but losing to the Rams certainly is ominous. A win in L.A. seemed almost a given.

Even with McCaffrey, Samuel, and Kittle ailing and missing from the offense, it seemed to be the defense that couldn’t respond to the demands. In the first half, there was a sequence in which the Rams had the third down and 29 to go, LA seemed notably hopeless. But as we should have known from watching pro football through the years, situations and ideas change almost as quickly as teams do from one end of the field to the other.

Brock Purdy, the Niners quarterback, played even better than some would give him credit for. He completed 22 passes in 30 attempts for 292 yards and three touchdowns, all three caught by Jauan Jennings. Purdy also ran 10 times for 41 yards.

“No problem with Brock,” said Shanahan. “He played his ass off.”

There wasn’t much more to give or to say.