7 Winners and 5 losers from the 49ers comeback win over the Seahawks

If you had to describe the San Francisco 49ers to someone, you’d point to Week 1. The ebbs and flows and highs and lows during the 60-minute game against the Seattle Seahawks were on full display. Ultimately, the Niners benefitted from Seattle kicking a field goal on 4th & 1. But good teams make their opponents pay for poor choices, and Brock Purdy and the offense did so on the final drive.

Let’s discuss the best and most questionable performances from Week 1, and everything in between.

Winners

Fred Warner and Dee Winters

Going back and forth internally about who stood out the most, regardless of which side of the ball, the linebacker duo took away the middle of the field in both facets. In football, you are either the hammer or the nail. Too often in 2024, the Niners were on the receiving end of the thump. Against the Seahawks, Warner and Winters continuously laid the hammer.

Winters had six tackles, four of which were for stops, meaning they constituted a loss for the offense, and was a demon as a blitzer. Winters’ job was to cause chaos during his seven pass rushes, and he succeeded. He also made an open field tackle in pass coverage and minimized the damage after the catch. Winters looked closer to a clone of his counterpart than a third-year player. Next Gen Stats tracks “hustle stops,” which is when a player covers at least 20 yards during the play. Winters had a pair of those. His speed made a world of difference.

I’d say Winters played his “A” game, and it still fell short of Warner, who is the Messiah of linebackers. Warner had one hustle stop, but five stops overall. Watching him navigate through traffic and stop the running back in his tracks will forever be cinematic.

Warner allowed one of the lowest passer ratings of the week at 39.6. He sniffs out route concepts and baited Sam Darnold on numerous occasions. However, it’s what Warner does outside of the box score that makes him our top winner. He’s getting the rookie defensive lineman lined up correctly pre-snap. You can see Warner telling them to move over a gap, or communicating with Upton Stout and Marques Sigle before the ball is hiked. The Niners are counting on several players making their first appearance on the field. They can do that because of Warner.

Ricky Pearsall

Brock Purdy has the utmost confidence in Ricky Pearsall. Case in point, Purdy’s second interception:

Pearsall gave Purdy every reason to be confident in him at every turn, leading up to that moment, and even after the fact.

While Pearsall struggled to separate from top-five pick Devon Witherspoon, he had everybody else attempting to cover him in hell. Pearsall ran away from 4.26 Tariq Woolen multiple times, creating separation each time. He should have had a touchdown on an end zone target had the ball not been floated toward him. I have never seen the 49ers run an isolated corner route with a receiver under Shanahan. Usually, there’s some kind of window dressing to get there. Pearsall got open against Woolen on the route for 26 yards. Then, of course, beat Woolen on a double move for 45 yards to put the 49ers in a position to win the game.

While it’s unsustainable, Pearsall’s 19.8 air yards per target on seven passes his way will open up the offense once Demarcus Robinson and Brandon Aiyuk are back. It was a strong Week 1 showing for the 49ers ’ first-rounder. Pearsall is why you can move on from a player like Deebo Samuel without thinking twice.

The nickel pass rush

If we establish that the 49ers’ defensive line went against an offensive line that figures to be one of the better units in the NFL this season, you can’t help but come away impressed with Robert Saleh’s nickel pass rush. Saleh planned to speed Darnold up and get the ball out of his hand. The 49ers blitzed Darnold on 27 percent of his dropbacks, which is ten percent higher than their season blitz rate from a season ago and would have been good for the fifth-highest rate in a single game from 2024.

Yetur Gross-Matos and Bryce Huff have carved out their roles. Gross-Matos is the designated defensive tackle on obvious passing downs, while Huff is the edge rusher in those situations.

Again, knowing that Darnold was playing hot potato, the pressure numbers aren’t going to stand out on the stat sheet. That doesn’t mean the Niners weren’t winning. No interior pass rusher had a higher win percentage than Yetur Gross-Matos in Week 1. He was more than two percentage points better than second place at 30.8.

On the edge, Huff had a 20 percent win percentage, which was 22nd among all edge rushers. Huff was sandwiched between names like Maxx Crosby, Josh Sweat, and tied with Aidan Hutchinson. Those two will take pressure off Nick Bosa, who was at 13.6 percent for the season.

Mykel Williams’ job was also evident. When Saleh runs games and twists, sacrifice yourself to open runways for Bosa. Williams was directly responsible for a pair of Bosa’s quarterback hits. Seattle went 3-for-10 on third down. That’s due to Saleh’s blitz packages and the Niners’ nickel pass rush.

Losers

Special teams

We’re not here to beat a dead horse, but you can’t miss field goals or have a blocked field goal and expect to make a deep playoff run. The 49ers can’t seem to get out of their own way. Missing kicks impacts the offense and puts more pressure on them to convert. It wasn’t just Jake Moody and the blocking. The punt team had a penalty after Siran Neal ran out of bounds on his own. The best thing Deebo brought to the table last year was flipping the field on kickoff returns. Skyy Moore had a return of 24 yards, while Isaac Guerendo went for 16 yards.

To their credit, Moore had an 18-yard punt return, and Thomas Morstead had a 54-yard punt, but as a whole, allowing a long kickoff return negates those.

The blocking

The box score was not pretty for Trent Williams. He allowed the single-most pressure in a game since he joined the 49ers. I counted three outright losses for Williams, all against Boye Mafe. But acting like he was bad sounds foolish. It ignores five or six other “highlight” level blocks, and a 37-year-old moving like a 25-year-old in the running game. You do not have to be worried about Williams. Trust me. It’s also worth noting that each of his losses happened after Williams got rolled up on in the middle of the second quarter.

Context is key when talking about Colton McKivitz’s performance. Trent works on an island. It was rare for McKivitz not to have a tight end or two lined up next to him or a running back there to chip. Kyle Shanahan is smart. He’s not going to hang Purdy out to dry.

The offensive line would slide his way to also ensure McKivitz wasn’t 1-on-1. There were numerous plays where Jake Brendel was blocking a defender, with McKivitz providing assistance or blocking down on a defensive tackle.

When McKivitz was isolated, it was either a 3-step drop, a quick pass to Christian McCaffrey, or a Purdy scramble. We don’t have to pretend he had a great game just because the pressure numbers were low. McKivitz had a blown block in the running game on the second play of the game. That wasn’t his only miss, either.

Brendel looked like Brendel. But not in the way most fans think of him. I thought he was the best lineman in the game.

Ben Bartch and Dominick Puni were fighting for their lives. It was not a good showing for the 49ers’ guards. They seemed to be a step late in the running game. I think the pressure got to Purdy, which is why he was all over in the pocket. He could have helped them by stepping up and resetting in the pocket, rather than bailing or drifting. That also made some of the pressure numbers look worse than they actually were. In the same breath, Purdy bailed the line out by running out of sacks and scrambling at times to avoid any would-be pressures.

McCaffrey had nowhere to run. The blocking scheme was peculiar. It looked like the offensive line didn’t know who to block on a handful of occasions.

The 49ers faced a stacked box on 8.3 percent of their running plays, but only ran for 3.3 yards per carry. The line only provided 1.05 yards before contact on average, good for 19th in the NFL in Week 1. It was undoubtedly a difficult matchup, as Demarcus Lawrence was a handful. Still, the 49ers were about six percentage points below league average in success rate on the ground. That’s not going to cut it moving forward.

Winners

Shanahan making chicken salad out of…

Explosives are the name of Shanahan’s game. He has said as much himself.

The longest rush was only 13 yards, largely due to the blocking. But the 49ers managed gains of 46, 26, 25, and 25 through the air. McCaffrey pinballed off tackles for his 25-yarder. Shanahan schemed open Kyle Juszczyk and Ricky Pearsall for the other two, and Pearsall outright won one of the explosives.

Shanahan had to make do with McCaffrey, Pearsall, and Purdy against a stout defense with a pair of quality cornerbacks, a pass rush that was getting the best of the offensive line, and a top-notch defensive head coach. And this was after losing George Kittle and Jauan Jennings.

Going nearly two full quarters without Pearsall was indeed a choice. Relying on a kicker instead of an offense that had momentum was a head-scratcher on 4th & 2. But all in all, Shanahan realized his dropback passing game was struggling, and found creative ways to get the ball to his best player underneath, and isolate Pearsall against the Seahawks’ non-Witherspoon cornerbacks. His sequencing and timing were brilliant.

Renardo Green

Green is the 49ers CB1. Deommodore Lenoir has the contract, but the way Robert Saleh called plays, it screamed that he wanted the Seahawks to throw it to Green. A double move toward the end of the game will have some fans thinking that Green had a poor game, but that came against a first-rounder without safety help. Nobody is defending that route. You make the tackle and live to fight another down. Green did, and Seattle didn’t score.

Speaking of tackles, Green’s stop on third down arguably saved the game:

You could say the same of his pass breakup against Jaxon Smith-Njigba in the fourth quarter on a deep pass down the sideline -- another play with no safety help.

Green only allowed one other catch during the game, and was a willing tackler, as evidenced by his three stops.

Sam Okouayinonu

You’re living in a fantasy land if you were expecting Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins, and C.J. West to make immediate impacts in Week 1. They are rookies. It is going to take time. While Mykel’s play was complementary and he did plenty of good things against the Seahawks, Sam O stole the show in the second half.

His forced fumble bailed out the special teams. Seattle was driving and looked to add points on the scoreboard. Sam O’s hustle earned him playing time. When he played, the Seahawks couldn’t move the ball. During Okouayinonu’s 15 plays, Seattle averaged 2.7 yards per play. Robert Saleh couldn’t take him off the field, including the final play of the game when Bosa sealed the deal.

The 49ers were the most dangerous when they could come at teams in waves. Sam O is the ideal role player for a team looking to integrate multiple rookies into its lineup.

Click here to read article