49ers position grades, takeaways from Week 10 loss to Seahawks

49ers Week 10 Special Teams, Coaching Grades

In some ways, this Week 10 loss was a good test for San Francisco, which has been relatively used to beating up on far inferior opponents over the first half of the season.

And like many of the 49ers players said after the game, the loss is a reality check, of sorts.

Kyle Shanahan wasn’t exactly outcoached in the game by Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll, per se. Rather there was a lack of execution by the Niners, particularly on offense.

Special teams, too.

The 49ers were also short veteran kicker Robbie Gould, who was out with a quad injury, meaning rookie kicker Chase McLaughlin had the chance to be the hero.

He was, at least at the end of regulation, kicking a game-tying 47-yard field goal in the waning seconds of the fourth quarter. But his crucial miss in overtime, following Dre Greenlaw’s interception and subsequent San Francisco offensive drive, was a killer.

Literally, as the Seahawks didn’t mess up their chance to kick a game winner later in the extra frame.

It’s anyone’s guess how the game would have turned out, had Gould been available.

Again, Shanahan did about as much as he could do dialing up a game plan that would have been effective enough, offensively.

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But the ground game wasn’t working much, and the 49ers falling behind in the second and third quarters meant passing the ball had to be at the forefront of the Niners game plan.

At times, it worked. There were more than a few instances where San Francisco receivers were getting open, only to see Jimmy Garoppolo either miss his targets, or some of his receiving targets drop catchable passes.

Shanahan can’t do much about that.

Defensive coordinator Robert Saleh deserves some credit, too, limiting both Russell Wilson and Tyler Lockett to respectable, yet not entirely elite, numbers on the night. That wasn’t an easy task, and Saleh’s defense did more than its share to give the Niners a victory.

Yet the lack of execution hurts just as much as any coaching gaffes, and the 49ers find themselves 8-1 instead of 9-0 after this crucial NFC West showdown.

The Niners will try to rebound on a short week at home in Week 11 against the feisty Arizona Cardinals.