MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — The San Francisco 49ers were eliminated from the playoffs just before kickoff on Sunday.
But if you thought that would allow them to play loose, free and to their full potential, well, you haven’t been paying attention to the 2024 season, one in which the 49ers are now guaranteed to end with a losing record. The 29-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins, in fact, seemed like a perfect summation of the season: There were too many mistakes, too many penalties and too many injuries to win.
The injury issues began on the first defensive series when linebacker Dre Greenlaw, who’d provided a blast of energy in the team’s previous outing, started feeling tightness in his right calf. Though it wasn’t the same leg on which he ruptured his Achilles tendon in February, the 49ers decided to be cautious and keep him on the sideline.
“Sometimes with him, you need to protect him from himself,” Nick Bosa said. “Because he’ll play through anything. And sometimes when you go through an injury and it’s not ready, I think the best thing for him would be to take it as slow as he can.”
Later in the game, left tackle Jaylon Moore, who already was filling in for injured Trent Williams, left the game with a quadriceps injury. And after that left guard Aaron Banks went down in a heap with a suspected MCL injury to his knee.
That left Spencer Burford, who to this point in his NFL career has been a guard, at left tackle and Nick Zakelj, a little-used third-year player, at left guard.
The result is what you’d expect: Brock Purdy was sacked three times and absorbed six quarterback hits.
“You’ve got to think about all that stuff,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said when asked if the surge of backups affected his play calling.”Everything goes into it.”
The 49ers also were down to their fourth running back. And while they said they had full trust in Patrick Taylor Jr., a fourth-year player making his first NFL start, they didn’t rely on him like a regular starter. Taylor got just eight carries and finished with fewer rushing yards, 24, than Deebo Samuel Sr., who had five carries for 25 yards. Taylor also struggled as a receiver out of the backfield, slipping once and dropping two passes, one of which the Dolphins nearly turned into an interception.
Samuel and George Kittle gave the 49ers life.
Heading into the game, the perception was that Samuel, who’d had meager production in his previous five outings and a prominent drop in his last game, had slowed down and was on his way out of San Francisco.
On Sunday, he made an argument to the contrary. The so-called wide back looked like his peak self in shedding tacklers and finishing with 121 combined yards, including a 16-yard catch-and-run touchdown in the second quarter.
“I think I’ve told you guys every week for the past, like, eight weeks that Deebo Samuel is a hell of a football player,” Kittle said. “We just continue to give him the ball and you’re going to see it from him. I think last week was tough on him, and I wouldn’t say there’s anything different about Deebo this week. He still showed up, he’s the same guy every single day, good energy every single day.”
Fighting all the way 💪#ProBowlVote Deebo Samuel Sr.
📺 #SFvsMIA on CBS pic.twitter.com/o3goVU2Gp9— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) December 22, 2024
Kittle, meanwhile, finished with a game-high 108 receiving yards on eight catches, the third time he’s gone over 100 yards this season. The outing left him 31 yards shy of his second straight 1,000-yard season.
Their efforts, however, weren’t enough to overcome the 49ers’ mistakes, which included three late-hit penalties by the defense and two illegal formation infractions by rookie Ricky Pearsall. The second of those by Pearsall wiped away a 16-yard play by Samuel in the third quarter that set up the 49ers at the Dolphins’ 2-yard line.
Instead of first-and-goal, they were left with third-and-13 from the Miami 23. Two plays later, kicker Jake Moody badly shanked his attempt wide left, something Kyle Shanahan was still steamed about after the game.
Asked about his confidence level in Moody, Shanahan hesitated before saying, “I mean, it wasn’t good out there missing that kick. I don’t know exactly what happened on the snap and the hold, but that’s one he’s got to make.”
Shanahan seemed to see the sequence as a microcosm of the game and perhaps of the season — one in which errors overpowered energy and strong efforts.
“That’s my big frustration,” he said. “I understand when your backs are against the wall and you have an uphill battle. When you’ve got first-and-goal at the 2, you make it third-and-goal at the (13) or whatever that is and you miss a kick — it’s completely something you’ve done on your own and that’s very frustrating. It makes it that much harder.”
Purdy, meanwhile, went over 300 passing yards for the fourth time this season. But pressure and tipped passes continued to be problems. At the Miami 3-yard line in the second quarter, for example, he had Taylor open to his left and Kittle open to his right. The pass, however, was deflected and fell incomplete, and the 49ers settled for a field goal.
Then as the 49ers tried to mount a comeback in the fourth quarter, the offensive line didn’t pick up a Dolphins stunt and defensive lineman Calais Campbell barreled into Purdy’s stomach as he threw to Jauan Jennings, resulting in an interception that effectively sealed the win for the Dolphins.
“AND HE’S INTERCEPTED”
The @MiamiDolphins with the CLUTCH takeaway pic.twitter.com/nEcaIePwfi
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) December 23, 2024
The interception was Purdy’s 10th of the season. That tracks with last year’s total, 11. The big difference, however, is touchdowns. A year ago, he threw 31. This year, he has 16 with one on Sunday going to Samuel and the other to backup tight end Eric Saubert.
Purdy hasn’t had two of his top targets from 2023, Brandon Aiyuk and Christian McCaffrey, for most of the season. And on Sunday, he was missing the left side of his starting offensive line and had the fourth-string tailback in the backfield behind him.
“It doesn’t matter who’s out there — we have what it takes to win and move the chains and put up points, give our team a chance to win,” Purdy said. “That’s my mindset. That’s where I’m hard on myself is we’ve had some guys that have been banged up and all that and we haven’t been able to get it done. So I’m just hard on myself when it comes to that. It hurts.”
(Top photo of George Kittle: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
