Getty Azeez Al-Shaair of the 49ers dives toward Zach Ertz of the Cardinals during their Sunday, November 7 game.
The San Francisco 49ers defense allowed 437 total yards, three rushing touchdowns and 31 points in the loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, November 7.
And that was with the Cards’ most dynamic offensive options Kyler Murray, De’Andre Hopkins and A.J. Green on the sidelines due to injuries.
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How bad was it? NBC Sports Bay Area columnist Matt Maiocco, who has covered the team for nearly 30 years, didn’t share warm fuzzies about the ‘Niners’ defense on Twitter.
The 49ers’ defense looks wimpy today against the Cardinals.
Maiocco additionally labeled the 49ers as a “lower-tier NFL team” in his column.
But he wasn’t the only one who ripped the performance of the 49ers’ defense.
Ex-49ers Safety Calls Out the Team
A depleted Cardinals offense went on to deplete the 49ers’ defense with guys who aren’t even considered the main catalysts of their offensive attack.
This 49ers defense made backup Colt McCoy look as if he was wearing a Texas Longhorn uniform all over again — going 22-of-26 for 249 yards and throwing one touchdown in one of his more accurate performances in his NFL career. Christian Kirk and James Conner torched the 49ers on catches of 50 and 45 yards, respectively.
Oh, 5-foot-9 running back Eno Benjamin may have only gained 39 total rushing yards, but 21 of it came after pummeling the much taller Dre Kirkpatrick — all 6-foot-2, 190-pounds of Kirkpatrick in the classic football example of when the low man always wins:
Eno Benjamin just took someone’s soul away from his body.
This kind of defensive outing left former 49ers safety Donte Whitner with no positive takeaways.
“There weren’t many things to be positive about,” Whitner said during the postgame show on NBC Sports Bay Area. “That was an awful game from the 49ers in all three phases: Offense, defense and special teams. And in particular, the secondary. They didn’t want to tackle today. There were guys getting ran through literally and figuratively out there today.”
Whitner saw a 49ers defense that lacked aggression against a Cards team that relied on reserves.
“There was no physicality. There was no energy from the defense,” Whitner said. “It felt like a scrimmage to me to open the game up. When you take the football field like that, whether they’re missing the three biggest stars or not, if you don’t go full force and do what you’re supposed to do and impose your will, a team like this can embarrass you and the 49ers got embarrassed tonight.”
Whitner’s ex-49ers teammate Joe Staley zeroed in on the 49ers’ body language during the 14-point loss.
“They looked absolutely shell-shocked that the Cardinals were going to come out and fight in this game,” Staley said. “You go in there with the wrong mentality, it’s the NFL and if you don’t take care of business and get on the details and play complementary football, a game like this happens.”
While Staley’s area of expertise is offense as a former All-Pro left tackle, he was observant of the 49ers’ defensive woes.
“I thought they got out-physical on both side of the ball: Getting run over time and time again breaking tackles, missed tackles in the defense. A lot of things to clean up and they don’t have time, they have to clean it up now.”
Kyle Shanahan Also Not Pleased
The Niners head coach joined in on the criticism of the defensive performance.
“It was extremely disappointing,” Shanahan said. “I didn’t think we tackled very well. I didn’t think we had 11 guys swarming to the ball enough. I think we made it pretty easy on those guys.”
According to Pro Football Focus, the 49ers missed 10 tackles in this game versus the Cardinals.
Shanahan, though, says he still supports defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans despite the Sunday outing. But as a whole, he said “We didn’t play a very good game today. We’ve got to play a lot better. I know our fans are disappointed. I’m disappointed too, but we’ve got to make sure we do better next week.”