In the tightening NFC West, the Seattle Seahawks play San Francisco in the 15th game. The Arizona Cardinals play San Francisco in the 16th game.
They like that.
The Rams are done with San Francisco.
They really like that.
Styles make fights in pro football, just like boxing, and the Rams keep losing the boxer-slugger matchup to the 49ers.
Maybe it’s just the way one lineman feels confident against another, even though they aren’t equals in all the other weeks. Maybe it’s just a mojo that one defense casts over a quarterback.
In any case, the 49ers beat the Rams 23-20 on Robbie Gould’s 42-yard field goal, which would have been 47 yards if Jalen Ramsey hadn’t barged offside.
That’s four consecutive wins for San Francisco in the series, and this time the 49ers came to town with 171 man-games lost due to various mishaps, and with Nick Mullens playing quarterback, not Jimmy Garoppolo.
The 49ers are now 5-6, the Rams 7-4, the Cardinals 6-5 after a surprising loss to New England, and the Seahawks 7-4 going into Monday night at Philadelphia.
“Give them credit,” said a tight-lipped Sean McVay, the Rams coach. “But when you don’t take care of the football it doesn’t matter who you play.”
Jared Goff was the target of that sentence. Over the past two seasons, the 49ers have become musclemen and Goff has a lot of their sand in his face.
In the losses he has completed 51.8% of his passes for four touchdowns and three interceptions. His QB rating on Sunday was 52.9, following 85.7, 60.8 and 72.0. He had a fumble and two interceptions, one of which became a touchdown in the hands of rookie nose tackle Javon Kinlaw.
“Just take care of the ball when you’re tackled and not fumble it, that’s an easy one,” Goff said. “Just throw the ball where it needs to be thrown.”
However, San Francisco only got seven points from Goff’s turnovers, and thanks to some Godzilla moments from Aaron Donald and a 61-yard scamper from rookie Cam Akers that set up his own touchdown, the Rams led 20-17.
John Johnson then broke up Mullens’ third down pass and made Gould kick a tying field goal. The game was still on the Rams’ racket.
But Goff misfired to Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp. When Johnny Hekker sailed a punt that bounced appetizingly, Van Jefferson couldn’t stop it from becoming a touchback.
Mullens might have gotten the shakes if he’d gotten the snap from his own 2-yard-line, and Donald’s body-snatching could have caused a safety. Instead he was impressively cool, and was 3-for-4 as he drained off the last 2:20 and allowed Gould to beat the Rams for the second time in 11 months.
The real difference was illustrated on a fourth-and-1. Fullback Kyle Juszczyk bulled for two yards (and also gave the 49ers 42 Scrabble points). The Rams never touched the ball again.
“They pushed some coverage toward me and toward Robert,” Kupp said. “They play leverages well. They play with great urgency. We could do a better job getting open and then moving through the progression. I don’t think it has anything to do with our energy. But energy doesn’t always match up with execution.”
Until Kupp caught a 30-yarder late in the third quarter, the Rams’ long play was 11 yards, and then Akers showed a burst that has been long advertised. That, and Troy Hill’s scoop-and-score from a fumble that Donald forced, were the Rams’ two touchdowns.
The 49ers are better equipped to play a fight-club game than the Rams are. During this streak they have run the ball 134 times, and they’ve possessed the ball 34 or more minutes in three of the four.
Kyle Shanahan’s outside-zone game was overwhelming at times, especially in the first half. It was familiar to McVay, who studied under Kyle’s father Mike in Washington. The elder Shanahan won two Super Bowls in Denver and could have gotten a 1,000-yard season out of your kid’s flute teacher.
Against the right matchup the Rams can go face-to-face, too. But this was too much of a contrast from Monday night’s 7-on-7 drill at Tampa Bay, a 27-24 win that featured 100 passes.
One can exaggerate 3-point wins and 3-point losses, and the Rams have not lost two consecutive games this season. Panic isn’t nearly as appropriate as the search for a different method to handle the 49ers in 2021, because they’re not going anywhere, except back to the weight room.
Posted by: https://anaheimsigns.com
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