Deommodore Lenoir knows the 49ers need to play with more urgency.
The San Francisco cornerback shed light on the feeling in the locker room after a devastating last-minute 20-17 loss to the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday at Levi's Stadium.
“I can feel that everyone is pissed off,” Lenoir said Tuesday on KNBR’s “Murph and Markus” show. “Because every game that we’ve lost this year, we’ve been leading in the fourth and we just don’t finish. So, it’s kind of that urge, now we’ve got to really finish. It’s that time to come together and put teams to bed.”
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The 49ers have struggled all season to close out games, and Sunday’s catastrophic loss to the rival Seahawks was hard for many to stomach.
After Nick Bosa left the game with an injury, Seattle quarterback Geno Smith shredded San Francisco’s defense. To add insult to injury, Smith did a variation of Steph Curry’s “night night” celebration after scoring the game-winning touchdown in the final seconds of the fourth quarter.
And it wasn’t just the defense either as offensive mistakes piled up throughout the contest and Brock Purdy was unable to drive the team down to score during crunch time in the fourth.
At 5-5, San Francisco faces a perilous climb back into playoff contention in the ultra-competitive NFC. Given the strength of the conference, the only way into the postseason might be winning the NFC West, a tall task considering the 49ers are 1-3 against the division this season.
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All eyes will be on San Francisco on Sunday as the team faces the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. A win against a strong Packers team would do a lot to restore confidence while a loss would crush what little hope remains of a postseason run.
For Lenoir and the rest of the defense, a change in mindset is long overdue.