49ers vowed to end frustrating late-game cycle in win over Seahawks originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SEATTLE — It was almost like déjà vu.
At the end of the third trimester in the 49ers win 36-24 against the Seattle Seahawks, it looked like Kyle Shanahan and his team were headed down a familiar path with a healthy lead slipping away.
Fred Warner and several of his teammates acknowledged the feeling of their last two defeats against the Los Angeles Rams And Arizona Cardinals – and they swore it would never happen again.
“A thousand percent,” Warner said when asked if they felt like they were going down the same path. “It sucked, but yeah. It was something that certainly felt familiar and I’m like, “Hey, we can go one of two ways here.” We can hold on in a hostile environment in a game we know we have to get, or we can settle for exactly how we played in the last two losses we suffered.
“That’s what I’m probably proud of right now, is how we got back up.”
At halftime, the 49ers led 16-3. On the first drive of the second half, 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy led the offense down the field with a nine-play, 70-yard drive that was capped by a George Kittle touchdown run to bring home the advances to 20 points.
Then things seemed to go off the rails in all phases of the game for the 49ers, and a total collapse seemed imminent.
Seattle’s Lavishka Shenault returned the ensuing kickoff for a 97-yard touchdown, bringing the Seahawks within 13 points after the 49ers’ special teams unit missed several tackles on the play.
On the ensuing 49ers drive, the offense was only able to muster 29 yards in four plays and was forced to punt. The Seahawks then responded with a 13-play, 94-yard touchdown drive to cut the lead to six points.
Shanahan tried as hard as he could to suppress the feeling that he had already been down the same path.
“I’m not going to talk about what happened in our last two losses,” Shanahan said. “Just stay locked in, don’t try to have any negative feelings and just try to take it one game at a time. Our goal is to be locked in for the entire game regardless of the score and I thought the guys played like that.
Kyle Juszczyk, who helped cap off the final offensive drive to close the door on a possible Seahawks comeback, shared that there were discussions on the sidelines about how much responsibility the offense felt for winning the game.
“The message on our sideline was, ‘All right, we’re dealing with this again, let’s go,'” Juszczyk said. “Let’s not hope that we have already done enough, that we have built a big enough lead and that we hope that things will work out and we will get the victory. No, let’s cement this victory, by going in to score and putting it on our shoulders.
“That’s exactly what we did, and I’m happy it ended that way.” That was definitely something that was emphasized.”
