Niners Nation
The San Francisco 49ers’ 35-point defeat was the second-largest margin in a playoff game in franchise history. After the game, head coach Kyle Shanahan said, “It’s a loss, but definitely don’t make more of it than it was. It was a loss.”
That’s an impressive perspective to have after walking off the field to a 41-6 score. Today, we’ll discuss what we learned about the 49ers after their playoff loss to the Seattle Seahawks.
During the game preview, I mentioned the team speed on the roster in the Week 14 rematch with the Seahawks in 2023. That season, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel, and Brandon Aiyuk could be found on the weekly Next Gen Stats leaderboard as the fastest players of the week.
A Niners player topped 20 miles per hour a whopping 16 times that season. The only player to accomplish that feat this season was Dee Winters after his interception with the Colts.
Jauan Jennings logged the fastest time at 19.23 miles per hour. The other two fastest ball carriers on the roster this postseason were Skyy Moore and Brock Purdy—a far cry from two playoffs ago. It’s not often you see a Kyle Shanahan quarterback standing in the pocket, holding the ball, and waiting for somebody, anybody to separate. It didn’t happen.
ESPN’s Nick Wagoner tweeted that the 49ers’ average top speed this year was 12.81 miles per hour, the sixth-slowest in the NFL. Samuel and Aiyuk didn’t test fast at the NFL Combine, but their play speed passed the eye test. That tells us that 40 times aren’t the best way to gauge play speed.
For example, Jennings ran a 4.7 40 and had the fastest time on offense this season. The play where Jennings reached that speed in the Wild Card round is precisely what the Niners need, a player that can, consistently, turn those intermediate in-breakers into 40+ yard catches.
Adding speed isn’t limited to the offensive side of the ball. In the Wild Card round, Saquon Barkley easily ran away from Deommodore Lenoir. This past weekend, Jaxon Smith-Njigba had clear separation on Darrell Luter on his end zone touchdown, while getting a hand on running back Kenneth Walker, who was problematic in each of the previous two games.
The 49ers are slow on the perimeter, and it showed at the worst possible times. The rookies, Upton Stout and Marques Sigle, are unquestionably fast. But the play speed everywhere else in the back-7 did not look like that of a playoff contender.
Spencer Burford has long been an intriguing option, but he was one of the last picks in the fourth round, who is undersized and an average athlete. Burford, like Ben Bartch, is an unrestricted free agent this offseason. There weren’t enough exposures of Burford learning from mistakes in pass protection to warrant another season as the starting left guard.
Center Jake Brendel is under contract for another...
