Field Gulls
Oh how sweet it is to win a division title and the number one seed. It’s even sweeter when it happens on the road against a team that’s had the upper hands for years. The Seattle Seahawks are NFC West champions and the top team in the conference after what had to be the most lopsided 13-3 game in NFL history. It was a miserable night for the San Francisco 49ers on their home turf, and their road to a home game Super Bowl just got a hell of a lot harder after not even cracking 200 yards against Mike Macdonald’s dominant defense.
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The San Francisco 49ers’ task all season was clear. Score, score and score again on offense, because the young defense was going to need a safety net. And, for many weeks, that’s exactly what they did.
But on Saturday night, that all came to a screeching halt, along with the 49ers’ hopes of a first-round bye and a comfy home-field advantage possibly all the way to the Super Bowl. The 13-3 loss to Seattle was a tale of defenses: The Seahawks were exceptional and the 49ers weren’t nearly good enough. One defense looked Super Bowl-ready. One did not.
In a prime time game, six days after a wild offensive shootout, we saw what happened when the 49ers’ offense was smothered. The outcome was what was foreshadowed in the offseason with the exodus of defensive veterans. And again in the first weeks of the season when defensive stars Nick Bosa and Fred Warner were lost for the season to injury.
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In the disappointing aftermath of the loss, there was a lot of praise that the defense held Seattle to just 13 points. But let’s be honest: The low output was largely due to self-inflicted damage...
