SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: How bad could it be?

By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle 49ers Insider

There’s a word for how the 49ers played against Seattle on Sunday night: Awful. The question is why?

Because defensive tackle Justin Smith was missing? Because Colin Kaepernick was missing? Because as linebacker Patrick Willis said, “Sometimes the best of us in sports have those moments”?

Or because, perish the thought, the Niners were not who we thought they were.

Without Smith, injured a week earlier, the 49ers defense wasn’t what it had been. The Seahawks, riding a wave and running figuratively at will – at least in the case of Marshawn Lynch – crushed San Francisco, 42-13.

A team that ranked No. 2 in overall defense, No. 1 against the run, was helpless and hopeless. Lynch – starting with the opening minute 12 seconds when be crashed and smashed 24 yards for a touchdown through the hole where Smith would have been – gained 111 yards by the end of the night.

On the other side, quarterback Kaepernick, denying the obvious, that he was frazzled by the insanely loud crowd at Seattle’s CenturyLink Field, had trouble either getting off plays or getting yards from those plays.

After a brilliant game eight days earlier against the Patriots, Kaep reverted to the second-year player he is, twice getting called for delay of game penalties, twice needing to call time out to avoid delay of game penalties and, although completing 19 of 36 for 244 yards, throwing as many interceptions (one) as touchdowns (one).

One report: Seattle coach Pete Carroll had noted that Kaepernick and the Niners were pitifully slow in having a play run off once they came to the line of scrimmage. In the noise and tumult of a place where the crowd, known as the 12th man, has its own flag flying from a pole, that tardiness would haunt.

The 49ers’ success has come from stopping the run, which they couldn’t do, and running without a stop, which they couldn’t do either. San Francisco gained only 82 yards rushing, and its main man, Frank Gore, had only 28 yards on six carries.

Now, with their seeding in the playoffs having dropped to No. 3, meaning no bye the first weekend, the Niners are confronted with some unnerving reality: How are they going to win in the postseason if the offense and defense are no better than they were against the Seahawks?

“We didn’t coach well enough,” said a grim, and newly 49, Jim Harbaugh. “Didn’t play well enough. We didn’t win the down enough. Everybody came away after this with the same feeling. This wasn’t good.”

This was depressing. This was awful.

“But we’ll wake up (Monday),’’ Harbaugh reminded, “and still have a half-game lead in the division. Our hand will be on the dial.”

The program to which they tune hardly will be the one the Niners expected to watch. The Niners fell a half-game behind Green Bay for the No. 2 seeding in the NFC. Unless the Vikings beat the Packers on Sunday, while the 49ers defeat Arizona, San Francisco will be playing wild card weekend.

And with Smith questionable – surely, as Adam Schefter of ESPN tweeted, Smith will not face Arizona – Mario Manningham on crutches after having his knee smashed and Vernon Davis recovering from a “mild” concussion, the 49ers could use a recuperative period.

“I thought it would be a closer game,” said Harbaugh tersely of the most one-sided loss in his two-year tenure as the 49ers' coach. “We don’t feel good about it. It’s how we handle it, how we respond.”

On a night of rain and revelry along the Puget Sound, Pete Carroll, Harbaugh’s adversary since Carroll was at USC and Harbaugh at Stanford, got his points (Seattle has scored an even 150 total its last three games) and, gleefully, his revenge.

The Seahawks were 0-for-3 against Harbaugh, and who would forget when, three years ago, Harbaugh had Stanford go for a 2-point conversion with a 30-point lead and Carroll at the post-game handshake queried him, “What’s your deal?’’

Carroll’s deal Sunday night as the Seahawks gained a place in the post-season was to stand hatless on the sideline and laugh and cheer at each Seattle score. There went a happy man.

Two of Harbaugh’s former Stanford team members, now with Seattle, receiver Doug Baldwin and defensive back Richard Sherman, were no less delighted. Baldwin caught two of the four touchdown passes thrown by Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson. Sherman returned a blocked David Akers field goal 90 yards for a touchdown in the opening minute of the second quarter.

“A 10-point swing,” said Harbaugh, meaning the three the Niners should have had and the seven Seattle did have.

The 10 points didn’t matter that much in the end. The runback, however, proved stunning, leading to speculation that the Niners’ focus didn’t make the trip from the Bay Area.

“I don’t know about that,” said Willis, “but whatever it was out there tonight, it wasn’t good.” Not at all. Not at all.