After 14 weeks, we finally saw the real 49ers

SANTA CLARA – It’s nice to know those 49ers didn’t completely fool us.

It’s reassuring to confirm that the performance they showed on the field in Week 14 – a 38-13 win over the Chicago Bears at Levi’s Stadium – is indeed still possible for this team.

We can take some comfort now, having seen – for the first time this season – a Niners team that showed toughness, fight and determination. We saw a team that was aggressive, efficient and built momentum through complementary football.

Yes, the 49ers may have waited 14 weeks to show it, but the red-clad team that took the field on Sunday was a good football team.

Those Niners on the field Sunday were the Niners we expected all season – a team that went from offensive performances (losing by a combined margin of 73-20) to the right kind of offense (319) over the last two weeks yards in the first half). , 24-0 lead) on Sunday.

The shame is that it was probably too little, too late for San Francisco. While they are not technically eliminated from postseason contention, the only realistic path to the playoffs for this team is to win the NFC West. Seattle’s win over the Cardinals on Sunday gives the Seahawks a two-game lead (and a tiebreaker) with four games left.

The cause of 2024 is probably lost.

But at least the Niners haven’t lost track.

Sunday was a perfect recovery situation for San Francisco, and they knew it. The season was spiraling out of control, with the Niners losing three games in a row, each in increasingly embarrassing fashion, and another loss — especially one against a team with a rookie quarterback and a first-time head coach — would likely put them on an irreversible tailspin.

Those faint playoff hopes would undoubtedly die, and the vultures surrounding this team, waiting for its ultimate demise, would create a deafening noise.

“We just had to dig deep and find ourselves,” quarterback Brock Purdy said. “This league is tough. It’s difficult. If you don’t have the drive, the energy and the belief in a building, it can be really difficult.”

“I just wanted to make sure we came out today and showed grit and fight,” Kyle Shanahan said. “We haven’t been able to fight and finish a game when things have gone bad… I think we’ve won a lot in those situations in the past, so we know what it looks like and what it feels like. “”

In a season where the 49ers have had no luck, they did get a reprieve on Sunday. Despite a lengthy break between games, the Bears posed no challenge. In fact, the Bears couldn’t have made the game any easier for the Niners. Their offense was ineffective in the first two quarters of the contest and their defense was ineffective in all four quarters.

Teams have been successful this season against the Niners’ offense through tight man-to-man coverage. The Bears, who had fired their head coach — who was also their defensive coordinator — before that game, fell back to zone defense snap after snap.

It was exactly what the doctor ordered for Shanahan, the Niners’ offensive coordinator, whose much-criticized offense represents exactly the kind of zone defense the Bears played.

Purdy threw 20 of 25 for 325 yards and two touchdowns. Jauan Jennings — the situational receiver thrust into the No. 1 role due to injury and poor play — had another standout game, catching seven passes for 90 yards and two touchdowns. And George Kittle, who had room to break through against the zone defense, rushed for 151 yards on six catches, including 104 yards after the catch.

Not to mention rookie running back Isaac Guerendo, who ran for 78 yards on 15 attempts and added two catches for 50 yards.

In total, the Niners scored nine plays of 20 yards each, nearly tripling the Bears’ total.

And by playing their best game of the season, the Niners gave themselves a reason to play next Thursday night when they host the Rams with a chance to climb out of the NFC West cellar and get back to .500 this season come.

“We feel good at the moment. We played well,” Shanahan said. But “if you don’t take care of business on Thursday, there’s not much to celebrate today.”

But even if Sunday’s performance proves to be a one-off success or a consolation prize in a lost season, the momentum that game created should not be ignored.

This will silence the macro and micro questions about this team, at least for a few days. We can all use a break from debating Purdy’s “true” value and fending off worm-brained national media theories about trading Shanahan to other teams this offseason.

“You’re going to have to throw me out of here,” Shanahan said of the unconfirmed rumor that the Niners might trade him to the Bears this offseason.

As if he wanted to take over this mess. They made the 2024 Niners look like a Super Bowl team on Sunday.

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After 14 weeks, we finally saw the real 49ers

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