Struggling San Francisco 49ers lose second straight game

MINNEAPOLIS — A little over two weeks ago, the San Francisco 49ers were undefeated and the league discussions after the demolition of the Dallas Cowboys Sunday night football.

Inside the Niners locker room after Monday night’s botched game Defeat 22-17 At Minnesota Vikings, this match could just as easily have taken place two years ago. Among the 49ers’ mistakes Monday: three turnovers, Minnesota’s 60-yard touchdown just before halftime on a rare general blitz in a situation and a missed 40-yard field goal.

The result was their second straight loss, something San Francisco hadn’t experienced since that day a year ago, and an overwhelming feeling that everything had come back to Earth after a dominant 5-0 start.

‘The NFL will humiliate you every step of the way,’ defensive end said Nick Bosa said. “And starting 5-0, you kind of have the confidence that we are what we need to be, but the NFL does that. Good players, good plans and we’re going to play another good team this week, so we must be ready.

In order to turn things around, the Niners need to find a way to pull off games like Monday’s and last week’s losses to the Cleveland Browns. In both contests, the Niners struggled to play the complementary football they played over the first five weeks, but still had chances to win in the final minutes.

The fact that the Niners have come up short each time has left them frustrated as they seem to do well when in control of the game from the start – they have won the first five games by an average of 19.8 points – but struggle when things are getting difficult.

As a linebacker Fred Warner was quick to point out, teams that advance deep into the playoffs can win any type of game they play.

“I think the problem right now is we have to find ways to win the dirty games, the ones where things aren’t looking good, and find a way,” Warner said. “Obviously we can win 30-10, but who are we and what are we going to do when we’re down and we have to come back and win a game?”

The Niners had several opportunities Monday night to put themselves in a much better position to earn their sixth victory. For starters, they could have made life more difficult for the Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousinswho torched them for 378 yards and two touchdowns without being sacked and only put pressure on 25% of his 45 drop backs.

When it was over, I came running back Christian McCaffrey lamented his first-quarter fumble deep in Minnesota territory, kicker Jake Moody he wished he could have recovered the 40-yard field goal he didn’t convert and the quarterback Brock Purdy took responsibility for two interceptions late in the game as San Francisco searched for the potential game-winning score.

But the strangest play of the night might have been the most grueling for the 49ers. Facing third-and-6 at the 40 with 16 seconds left and no timeouts, the Vikings looked ready to accept an underneath pass that could help set up a field goal.

Instead, Niners defensive coordinator Steve Wilks went on an all-out blitz, sending seven defenders at Cousins. According to the Vikings coach Kevin O’ConnellCousins ​​recognized the pressure and fired a deep shot for the rookie Jordan Addison.

As the ball flew toward Addison, Niners cornerback Charvarius district came up front for what looked like his second interception of the night. But Addison took it away from him and, unassisted behind Ward, raced into the end zone for a 60-yard touchdown to give Minnesota a 16-7 lead.

“It was a game changer,” O’Connell said.

It was also an unusual call from Wilks. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, it was the first 7-player pass in the final 30 seconds of a half in opposing territory since Week 11 of 2020. When asked after the game if he agreed with the call, Niners coach Kyle Shanahan said. this would be a topic his team will talk about in the coming days.

“That’s something we’ll be discussing throughout this week,” Shanahan said. “Obviously I didn’t like the result.”

For a Niners team that entered the season as a Super Bowl favorite and then played like one for the first five weeks, the challenge will only get more daunting from here. They left Minnesota late Monday evening to return home where they will begin preparing for a Cincinnati Bengals team coming off its bye and two straight wins.

From there, the Niners will have their bye then travel to play the Jacksonville Jaguarsfollowed by matches against Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Seattle Seahawks, Philadelphia Eagles and again the Seahawks. This is, at least on paper, the toughest part of the Niners’ schedule and will go a long way in determining how seriously they should be taken as contenders.

“We can’t sit here and worry about what happened before this,” Shanahan said. “We have to make sure we do everything until Sunday, when the game is over, to find a way to beat the Bengals. And then we go into our bye week. I just watched our guys right now and it We have 5 1/2 days left and we need to focus on that and make sure we go into this bye week 6-2 and not 5-3.”