By Art Spander
They tell us good teams find a way to win. This season, the 49ers are finding ways to lose. Therefore, the Niners must not be a very good football team. But you didn’t need any deductive reasoning to know that.
Not after the last two games, one against the Buffalo Bills when they were ineffective on defense, the other on Sunday against the Washington Football Team, when they were, well, terrible on offense.
Terrible, not that they didn’t run or pass — the Niners had 344 yards total to 193 for Washington. Terrible that a pass by Nick Mullens was intercepted and run back 76 yards for a touchdown — the infamous “pick six” — and a fumble by Mullens when he was sacked was returned 47 yards for a touchdown.
Small wonder, then, in their second straight Covid-19-forced home away from home, State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., the Niners were defeated, 23-15, by a team only slightly less worse than they have become. But one that, unlike San Francisco, is going to the playoffs.
Three turnovers Sunday, the two that proved destructive and another lost fumble. There have been a ton of them since Mullens replaced the injured Jimmy Garoppolo — some Mullens’ fault, some not — and they are a primary reason the Niners are 5-8 in a season going nowhere.
As Trent Williams, the offensive tackle who joined the Niners this season after years in Washington, pointed out, “The ball is everything. Without the ball, it’s impossible to win.”
Cycles. We go through them. So do teams. When things are going fine, well, there are lyrics to remind us that all too soon they won’t go well. “Riding high in April,” Frank Sinatra sang, “shot down in May.”
Whatever can go wrong will go wrong. That’s Murphy’s Law. A season after so much went right, until the second half of the Super Bowl, the Niners have been beset by injuries, errors and bad breaks. That’s a blend guaranteed to ruin the hopes of any sporting franchise.
The Niners have been patching and matching and hanging on. Or had been. Was it appropriate that on the first offensive play of the game Sunday, receiver Deebo Samuel reinjured his hamstring and was finished?
Whatever, if you don’t lose fumbles and throw interceptions, you might have a chance.
Last year when he was at Ohio State, Chase Young was making the case why he should be the No. 1 overall pick in this year’s NFL draft. That turned out to be Joe Burrow, the quarterback from LSU. Young went second, to Washington. His claim to be first has some validity.
He tore through the Niners in the second quarter (Williams was out of the game temporarily), knocked the ball from Mullens’ hand and ran it the 47 yards for the score that put Washington in front, 13-7.
That came at the end of the first half. The hit may have been intimidating. On the final play of the third quarter, Mullens was intercepted by Kamren Curl and run back 76 yards for a touchdown.
“We had a bad day,” said Niners coach Kyle Shanahan. “We missed a few opportunities early on offense. You don’t keep getting those again; Nick missed a few open throws. We struggled with some big penalties, I thought we had more drops than we usually have.
“Regardless we could have found a way, if it weren’t for the turnovers.”
Shanahan said after Mullens’ big interception, he thought about replacing him with C.J. Beathard. But as Beathard warmed up, Mullens passed to Kyle Juszczyk for a touchdown.
Mullens said on the fateful pick he was trying to find an outlet.
“You have to protect the ball,” Mullens agreed. “You can’t make that mistake. That changed the game.”
Nothing, unfortunately, is going to change the Niners’ record. “I expect us to play better than we did Sunday,” Shanahan said.
But in this season, expectations are thrown or fumbled away.