http://sfo.scout.com/story/1476110-49ers-sacked-by-the-rams-13-10?s=69
49ERS SACKED BY THE RAMS, 13-10
Chris BidermanNiners Digest
Coming in heavily favored against the 2-5 Rams, the 49ers were shocked 13-10 at home Sunday, falling to 4-4 behind an ugly offensive performance that included eight sacks allowed. Jim Harbaugh's team is off to its worst start since he became coach.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - It all came down to one play.
The 49ers, having allowed a season-high eight sacks, were on the doorstep of the end zone with a chance to take a four-point lead with two seconds remaining to wash away what had been a dreary afternoon.
But as Colin Kaepernick took the snap from rookie center Marcus Martin, making his NFL debut, he bobbled the ball, pushed into the pile for the game-clinching quarterback sneak, and lost the ball in the jumbled mass of bodies.
Rams linebacker James Laurinaitis recovered Kaepernick's fumble in the end zone, stunning what had been a crowd at Levi's Stadium aching for something to get excited about - like a last-second win.
Instead, the 49ers lost 13-10 to a Rams team that came in 2-5, three weeks after San Francisco beat the same team 31-17 on its home field. The 49ers fell to 4-4, their worst record through eight games under Jim Harbaugh since becoming head coach in 2011.
"We got to suck it up," the dejected coach said. "That was a tough loss. We got to play better football, coach better football. Better habits. Play better."
Harbaugh's team came into Sunday off its bye week, following a 42-17 dismantling by the Denver Broncos Oct. 19. In that game, Kaepernick was sacked a season-high six times. Sunday, the Rams sacked Kaepernick six times in the first half alone. They finished with eight, more than doubling their season total of six.
"We got all the talent in the world," left tackle Joe Staley said. "We were doing some dumb stuff and they took advantage of it."
"Dumb blocks. Dumb techniques. Dumb schemes. Played like (expletive)."
The defeat did not come without controversy.
"I know I crossed the line," Kaepernick said of the final play, indicating he thought he scored before fumbling.
But that wasn't the first questionable call made by the officiating crew headed by Jerome Boger.
With 42 seconds left, Kaepernick hit receiver Michael Crabtree toward the front pylon on the right side of the end zone. Crabtree was in the end zone, came back for the ball, and rolled out of bounds.
Inside two minutes the officials reviewed the call to see if the ball broke the plane under Crabtree's control. The ruling that Crabtree made the catch and did not score was upheld.
However, the clock was running, despite Crabtree rolling out of bounds untouched. San Francisco's next snap came with 14 seconds remaining after Boger indicated there would not be a change to game clock following the review. The game clock resumed running potentially taking away 20 seconds for San Francisco to work with.
"They said they would review all of it – the clock, the catch, the spot. They came back with a ‘play stands.’ That was the only explanation,” Harbaugh said.
It was an ugly and disjointed performance by the 49ers' offense. The makeshift offensive line was starting its fifth different combination in eight games, including the NFL debut of Martin, who played just 90 preseason snaps before suffering a dislocated knee cap against the Chargers in the third exhibition game.
"Every week is going to be something different. You just got to learn from your mistakes, watch the film and correct the mistakes," Martin said.
With Martin, 20, in charge of assigning offensive line protections from his position at center, the Rams decided to blitz the 49ers heavily, often bringing more pass rushers than 49ers had blockers.
"They blitzed like a (expletive) ton," Staley said.
San Francisco did well to adjust on the final drive where it looked like they would come away with a field goal, at least, after starting the possession at their own 12-yard line. Stevie Johnson got the drive going with a 25-yard catch up the left side, followed by a 20-yard grab over the middle by Anquan Boldin.
The 49ers were put in position to win the game by a 25-yard pass interference call on cornerback Trumaine Johnson on Crabtree deep down the left sideline.
Frank Gore, who finished with 49 yards on 14 carries, did not get a rushing attempt at the goal line. Instead, the 49ers tried a play-action passing play following the completion to Crabtree that Kaepernick was forced to throw away.
"It don’t get no tougher than this," Gore said. "We didn’t play a good game. Defense gave us the opportunity. Offense didn’t make plays when we had to. The Rams played a good game, they played hard, and they got the win."
The 49ers defense forced two Austin Davis interceptions in the second quarter on back-to-back drives. They were able to capitalize on the first, after struggling offensively following Phil Dawson's 34-yard field goal on the opening possession.
Davis rolled right and was looking for wideout Tavon Austin along the right sideline. But the ball was under-thrown and safety Antoine Bethea was there to make his second interception of the year.
Three plays later, Kaepernick scrambled right after the play broke down and found a wide-open Boldin in the middle of the field for a 27-yard touchdown. Both of Boldin's TD grabs this year have come against St. Louis.
On the Rams' next drive, Davis, again, under-threw Kenny Britt deep down the right sideline and was intercepted by Perrish Cox, who made his fourth pick of the year, good for second in the NFL.
Unlike the teams' previous meeting, when 49ers receiver Brandon Lloyd scored inside the final minute, it was the Rams that scored before halftime this week. Britt was left alone in the middle of the field after rookie inside linebacker Chris Borland, making his second NFL start in the place of injured Pat Willis (toe), missed a coverage assignment leading to the 21-yard touchdown catch.
The score came three plays after Kaepernick was strip-sacked by Robert Quinn, giving the Rams the ball at the 49ers' 36 just prior to the two-minute warning.
Borland had an outstanding game in Willis' stead, notching a game-high 18 tackles. But it was his one mistake that he said he will remember.
"A loss is a loss. I blew an assignment that cost us a touchdown and may have cost us the game. So I don’t really feel good about it," Borland said.
Kaepernick finished with 237 yards on 22 of 33 completions. Davis completed just 13 of 24 for 105 yards. The 49ers out-gained the Rams 263-193.
The 49ers will pick up the pieces and hope to rebound on the road against the New Orleans Saints (4-4) next week, who won in Carolina Thursday night, giving them three extra days of rest and time to prepare.
San Francisco didn't get any help within the division Sunday, either. The Arizona Cardinals improved to an NFL-best 7-1 with a win 28-17 win over the Cowboys while Seattle (5-3) jumped a game ahead of the 49ers with a 30-24 win over the Raiders.
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WTF do the 49ers do on their bye week?
1 win out of of 4 games
Does Harbaugh give the players and coaching staff 2 weeks off and tell them to show up for the next game?
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The refs helped us ALL game and we still lose!
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LMAO. The loser Kaepernick finds a new way to lose a close game. The guy sucks, can we please finally admit it?
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Trade CK and get rid of Harbaugh today. Tired of both of them. While you are at it, trade every one of our OL. If you can't beat the Rams at home after two weeks to prepare you deserve to start over.
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IM SPEECHLESS
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Colin Kaepernick is not a good player. He's all hype based on what he's been able to do to Green Bay's horrible Dom Capers defenses. Blaming the OL is garbage, the guy is surrounded by weapons, and he has some of the best weapons at WR, TE and RB in the league. Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady don't have good offensive lines (and Brady has crap weapons on offense), either, but they don't seem to struggle because of it.
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Next week will be even worse. The Saints will destroy our injured defense, while our offense....what offense, LOL! Joke of the league at this point next to the NFL front office and officials.
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Look, Kap made his mistakes, but this game was lost by the offensive line. The Rams had 8 sacks today. They had just 6 all season prior to this game.
Unless the offensive line gets its act in gear, the Niners are in big time trouble.
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There are some very delusional fans here who actually think the Niners are a real contender at this time and continue to blow fluffy goodness up our shorts!
Wake up, you were wrong starting 8 years ago and you're wrong now!
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He continues to make those SAME mistakes.
You're supposed to actually get better the more you play!
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The only decent SF team is the giants.
Face it! Our window has closed and it's time for us to take a seat behind the hawks and cards!
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I hate to say it for all he's done here, and I don't want to be knee jerk.
But I'm fine with letting Harbaugh go to Michigan or wherever after this season.
I don't know if it's all his fault, and I don't know what the players actually think of him. But it just seems like this was a season, or has been a season, of too many distractions. From the locker room chemistry between coach and players, to the offseason crap with Kaep(okay he was innocent, but still), Aldon, and McDonald, to the injuries, which aren't anyone's fault.....
But, I live in Ohio and I don't have any NFL packages or anything I pay for. I listened online. Listening to the radio guys call it and just listening to the action, the Rams didn't beat us today. We beat us today. The Rams had more sacks today than they had coming in this season. I know some of you put a lot of blame on Kaep, and no he wasn't good. But it sounded as if they kept trying to run the same play action play that never came close to working, was slow developing, and by the time Kaep looked up to try to do anything, he had defenders in his face. I don't know what any QB is expected to do in that situation. Sure, throw the ball away if he can. But if he doesn't even have time to do that.
It just seems like offensively Roman and Harbaugh don't even know what they want to do in a game Do we even have an offensive identity? I know, I know, our identity is a sorry offense. But seriously, do we even have a consistent, "We're going to rely on Gore and the running game", or, "We're going to rely on Kaep and quick throws to our WR's", or "We're going to be a balanced team offensively". It seems like 8 games in, it's fly by the seat of our pants and hope we score enough to win.
There have been things this year that have been beyond anyone's control. But the lack of discipline and making, as they said on the radio feed, unforced error after unforced error is something that needs to be addressed and actually should have been addressed long ago. That's on the players, but even more it's on Harbaugh and the coaches.
The Jacksonville Jaguars scored 23 points today and as I look, the Raiders have scored 17- Seattle of course is going to win too. But those are awful teams that don't have anywhere near the skill position talent that we do on offense.
10 points today is unacceptable. Of course, it sounds like Michael Crabtree was across the plain on that catch, so maybe we actually should have won and got screwed a bit by the refs. But it never should have come down to that.
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When you can't beat the Rams at home, your season is pretty much done. I expect this team to go through the motions the rest of the way. Hapless OL. Injured defense, which is where the real talent lays. A QB who cares more about his tattoos than learning the game (should have kept a Smith). A HC who has no idea how to plan for a game, nor can't make adjustments during the game. It is over.
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The officials bailed us out from a possible blowout loss this one "questionable" call wouldn't have won it for us if all things were equal anyway!
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What calls are you talking about? Unless the officials called back sure TDs for the Rams, there was no for sure scoring for them today. They sucked on offense too.
The play's I'm talking about are obvious. They said Crabtree caught the ball. The replay shows the ball across the plain. So if it is a catch it is a TD, otherwise, it was incomplete. You couldn't have it both ways on that play, yet the officials some how did.
The CK play is irrelevant. Should have never happened because Crabtree scored with the catch. If that had been incomplete, I doubt they run a QB sneak.
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The quick whistle on the Gore fumble. The two non-calls on false starts on our last drive. The non-call on pile driving the ram RB on their FG drive that would have used more time and put the ball inside our 10. Plus others!
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Anyway, I'm done with the 49ers for now. They have no identity expect for killing themselves. Reminds me of the Singletary era. All the talent in the world. Have no idea how to utilize it. Our WR core alone should keep coaching staffs up late at night, but with a hapless OL, a QB who only has one speed and a HC who only knows 5 step drops/dive plays, they laugh it off as useless weapons.
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From what I saw today we got a lot of breaks from the refs including the one on the Rams late drive where Borland pile drived the guy on his head. Borland did get a ton of tackles, but how many times did he blow his assignment looking into the backfield and not covering his man. He is still freelancing too much. Yes I do think Crabtree had a TD and same with Kaep, but we still sucked bad. OL just awful.
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There was only two calls tonight that screwed a team out of a TD. Those two calls were against us. I don't remember any call like those two happening against the Rams. Could they have prolonged drives? Sure. Would they have guaranteed scores? Nope.
Either way, the 49ers should have won this game outright. The Rams have one of the most injury plagued teams in the league on both sides of the ball, a horrific rush defense and horrible young pass defense. Our Offense should have hung at least 35 on them tonight. Defensively the 49ers played great tonight IMO, but then again that was against the Rams at home which isn't saying much.
I expect the 49ers to get destroyed next week playing on the road against the Saints. Only way the 49ers could right the ship is win out, which I doubt happens looking at the schedule. Today's game was a shoe in win given the circumstances and they still lost. They are done IMO.
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Niners need to get rid of this idiot QB Colin K.
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absolutely horrendous performance today. this is becoming a habit- we play far below our ability and beat ourselves out there. this team seems out of sync and we have WAY too much talent to be playing like this.
I don't want to dismiss the rams- they're a feisty, well coached team with a lot of young talent. but they're also really depleted and have a nobody at QB. we not only should've won this game (particularly with an extra week of prep) but we should've MURDERED this team. I'm talking by 2 TDs+. but we couldn't get out of our own way.
I'm not even mad at the call on the final play. the bottom line is, that's a very hard play for the refs to see and while I think he broke the plane with possession, we never should've let the game come down to that. we executed poorly ALL day and deserved to lose. you can't play like crap for 4 quarters and expect to win. if we were playing a true playoff team today, we would've been killed about 35-10.
the o-line was the main culprit today and as a result CK was never comfortable. but I'm really getting worried about him too. even passes he completes, he just doesn't seem to have command of what is going on out there. his passes are frequently high, or low, or behind receivers. true, an nfl receiver should catch it if it hits his hands. but a couple of those passes to c-tree that I think of, if CK puts it where it needs to be and where the receiver is trying to break, we not only move the chains but get big gains or a TD. a few of those ones CK wasn't even under pressure either.
so I don't know what's going on out there but none of it looks good. we almost have to win out to make the playoffs and that's highly unlikely. possible but highly unlikely. this team has the talent and potential but for whatever reason, the mental focus seems to be lacking. there don't seem to be any leaders out there either, who are uniting the team together and getting everyone focused when things are not going well. at this rate we definitely won't make the playoffs. shoot, we will struggle to have a winning season if we stay on this trajectory.
what a sad, sad state of affairs. it's hard to amass this much talent on one team and we've completely wasted it with how we've performed.
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The sad fact is, the 49era are a .500 team. The sad fact is, Kaepernick is overrated. At the biggest moments in his career, in his biggest games, he has choked. He lacks composure. His mind races. He loses focus. He makes hideous mistakes. He is overrated. When the chips are down, he often comes up small. It's time to stop making excuses.
Even his commercials suck. Whatever it is that great quarterbacks like Montana, Elway, and Payton Manning have, he lacks. The saddest thing is, Kaepernick has such great physical talent. But mentally and emotionally at crunch time, he is sorely lacking.