Garoppolo not good enough to overcome receiver issues. How will the 49ers recover?
It wasn’t the smokey air inside Levi’s Stadium that cost the 49ers their game Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, but it was hard for the offense to breathe.
San Francisco’s lackluster performance in a 24-20 defeat to the Arizona Cardinals can be traced directly to an offense that was down to just three healthy receivers by the end of the game, including exactly none the team drafted the past two seasons as Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, Jalen Hurd and Jauan Jennings weren’t suited up.
Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo simply wasn’t good enough to overcome mistakes or downtrodden personnel, which could be surprising given the way he elevated a lackluster roster during his first impression with the 49ers in 2017, when they went 5-0 in his starts before a $137.5 million contract.
Garoppolo also tied for the NFL lead with four fourth-quarter comebacks last season. But he failed in the final moments Sunday, missing on throws to Kendrick Bourne and Trent Taylor that decided the game. With a chance to take the lead in the final minute, Bourne had the Cardinals’ secondary beat with a strong double-move route, but Garoppolo badly underthrew a wobbly pass, giving Patrick Peterson enough time to get to Bourne and break up the play. A throw to the back end line might have won the game.
“That’s one I wish I had back. When you get opportunities like that, you’ve got to take advantage of them,” Garoppolo said.
Moments later on fourth-and-5, Garoppolo’s pass went too far behind Taylor, forcing Taylor to reach behind him, rather than make the throw toward the sideline giving Taylor a chance to make the grab and get out of bounds.
The poor placement allowed Byron Murphy a chance to break up the play, ending the 49ers’ chance at a comeback attempt, and leaving the defending conference champions licking their wounds.
“I don’t think we got into a very good rhythm,” Garoppolo said. “Just one drive would be great, one drive would be not so good. The consistency that’s what wins games in football, especially in the NFL. It’s just the more consistent you could be, starting with myself, it’s going to make everything a lot easier.”
The Garoppolo-led offense had just a few bright spots Sunday — like Raheem Mostert’s 76-yard catch and run for the season’s first touchdown, Garoppolo’s perfect pass to fullback Kyle Juszczyk for a big gain just after the Cardinals took the lead in the fourth quarter, and Jerick McKinnon’s first touchdown since December 2017 — but those flashes weren’t enough.
The defining statistic from Sunday? The 49ers went 2-for-13 on third and fourth down, including when they gave the ball to Arizona inside their 1-yard line after Mostert failed to score in the second quarter.
“You just got to play football,” tight end George Kittle said. “It doesn’t really matter who’s up and who’s down. I know four wide receivers is not usually what you want to do. We had four receivers that were out there today and they all had the ability to make plays.”
But the receivers, generally, did not make enough plays. Nor was there much opportunity. Garoppolo completed just 4 of 11 targets to his receivers on the day, completing just 2 of 5 passes to both Bourne and Taylor. The embattled Dante Pettis, who started the game, had one target, a long throw into Cardinals’ territory which harmlessly fell incomplete.
“We just had a lot of mistakes,” Kittle continued. “That was our biggest issue. Just couldn’t get drives going, couldn’t finish drives because of our third-down percentage. We just got to better.”
The 49ers came into the game without their presumptive top two receivers. Samuel on Saturday was placed on injured reserve and will be out until Week 4 against the Eagles, at the earliest, while Aiyuk, the talented rookie, was sidelined with a hamstring injury despite being limited in practice Thursday and Friday. Hurd, of course, won’t play this season after tearing his ACL early in training camp.
The result Sunday came with coach Kyle Shanahan relying heavily on heavy personnel, with just two receivers on the field. The Cardinals used that to their advantage by condensing the middle, doubling Kittle, and not worrying about getting beat deep.
“We had a number of chances to win that game,” Shanahan said. “I thought we started out very well. Thought we had a chance to run away with it a little bit in the first half. Anytime you average eight yards a play and you’re holding them pretty good on the other side of the ball, thought we’d have more points to show for it than what we did.”
The 49ers opened with a 10-0 lead before the Cardinals blocked a punt and took over at San Francisco’s 10-yard line. The next play, Arizona scored on a touchdown to running back Chase Edmonds. From there, Shanahan’s team punted, turned it over on downs at the 1-yard line, punted, and hit a field goal following an interception that put the ball at the Cardinals’ 26.
“We didn’t convert one third down in the first half. We didn’t convert one fourth down and we didn’t convert in the red zone,” Shanahan said. “So, no matter how well you do on first and second down, you’re not going to get many points when you are 0-for in all the other situational areas.”
Garoppolo’s final line: 19 of 33 (58 percent), two touchdowns, no interceptions and a 103.0 rating. Arizona quarterback Kyler Murray was tough for the defense to handle, throwing for 230 yards on 26 of 40 completions (65 percent), with a touchdown and an interception. He added 100 yards on the ground but finished with 91 after final kneel-downs.
Kittle was clearly the team’s top option in the passing during the first half. All of his four catches and 44 yards came before he limped off the field late in the second quarter to have his left leg tended to. Kittle didn’t make a catch in the after returning in the third quarter, which could speak to the impact of the injury and Arizona realizing the home team was low on weapons.
Either way, the 49ers needed Garoppolo to find ways to win the game, but he didn’t make the throws late. And it wasn’t enough to overcome the blocked punt, failed fourth-down conversion at the goal line and the other sloppiness.
“He had some good plays in there,” Shanahan said. “But just like the entire offense, just missed a number of opportunities that it was going to take to win that game. We had a couple there, but (Garoppolo has) got to play better. We’ve all got to play better on offense, especially, and it starts with me.”
This story was originally published September 13, 2020 at 7:37 PM.
