After another late collapse in Sunday's 20-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks, the 49ers have no one to blame but themselves.
The reasons for San Francisco's inability to close out a win were largely self-inflicted, as coach Kyle Shanahan pointed postgame at his offense's frequent penalties that derailed drives.
The players agreed, with quarterback Brock Purdy emphasizing the 49ers' self-inflicted wounds that cost them points.
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"It was just one of those games where you just couldn't hurt yourself," Purdy told reporters Sunday. "I feel like we had just some mishaps with some penalties, and we had opportunities where we're moving the ball, and we just kept hurting ourselves. And so, operationally, I feel like we’ve just got to be better and can't hurt ourselves. And once we have momentum, we’ve got to keep running with it, and we’ve got to finish drives.”
San Francisco finished the game with nine penalties for 54 yards compared to four for 20 by Seattle. Even then, the 49ers had a good chance to win it late, but they couldn't quite overcome those mistakes -- a common theme this season.
Purdy was asked postgame about what's different now for the 49ers in that area compared to years past.
"Anytime you have some kind of holding, a false start or something that can hinder you, it's never a good thing. In the years past, we can put that behind us and play the next play. That's the same for right now. But we’ve just got to look at the film, be real with ourselves and just try to limit those kinds of things. Just because we had success the last couple years ... just because something bad happens to us, we're just magically going to make up for it.
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"We’ve got to have the chip on our shoulder to go take it every single play and down and game."
Other members of the 49ers' offense shared a similar sentiment -- even using the same idiom to express their issues.
"We shot ourselves in the foot," left tackle Trent Williams and receiver Ricky Pearsall each said in the locker room after the loss.
In particular, both players detailed the need for the San Francisco offense to perform better to complement their defense's strong play.
“We have to be better. We have to execute better," Williams asserted. "We have to put more than 17 points on the board if we want to win a divisional game.”
"As an offense, we always want to go out there and score every time we touch grass," Pearsall added. "That just gets frustrating when we don't do that, and then it puts a lot more pressure on the defense at the end right there when they're having a really good game.”
The 49ers offense needs to clean up those self-imposed setbacks soon as they head into a difficult part of their schedule: back-to-back road games against the 7-3 Green Bay Packers and 9-2 Buffalo Bills.
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