SANTA CLARA — The San Francisco 49ers just kept their season alive with a 38-13 statement win over the Chicago Bears. Here are the 49ers’ grades for this performance.
QUARTERBACK: A-PLUS
One of the best performances of Brock Purdy’s career. He hit 80 percent of his throws, completed passes to seven different receivers, threw for 325 yards and 2 touchdowns and posted a passer rating of 145.4. Finally, he stopped forcing passes to Deebo Samuel, who has been killing the 49ers’ offense all season (more on him in a minute). Instead, Purdy threw six passes to George Kittle and eight passes to Jauan Jennings. Those are the two best receivers on the team and they should have been featured consistently this year. Last week, Kittle caught just one pass. Afterward, Purdy said his progressions didn’t take him to Kittle. With all due respect, screw your progressions, Brock. Find your best players. And that’s exactly what he did today. He’s growing up. And now he has four more games to show he’s worth a multi-year contract that will make him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL.
RUNNING BACKS: B-PLUS
No offense to Christian McCaffrey, but the 49ers are better without him this season. In four games with him, they averaged just 15 points per game. In 9 games without him, the 49ers are averaging 27.6 points per game. And that’s because the 49ers get all of their playmakers involved when McCaffrey is out. Today, Isaac Guerendo started the first game of his career and scored two touchdowns. He also had a 30-yard run, a 27-yard catch and a 23-yard catch. He’s a big play waiting to happen and he should have had a role in the offense all season. Unfortunately for the 49ers, he left the game with a foot injury after 15 carries. Perhaps he couldn’t handle such a big work load. His replacement, Patrick Taylor Jr., gained just 25 yards on 7 carries. The 49ers need Guerendo to play this Thursday against the Rams.
FULLBACK: C-MINUS
Two targets, one catch, three yards. But hey, at least he didn’t fumble at the goal line like last week.
WIDE RECEIVERS: B
Jauan Jennings was outstanding — seven catches for 90 yards and 2 touchdowns. He deserves another contract extension. He already has outperformed the two-year deal the 49ers gave him this offseason. His counterpart, Deebo Samuel, was terrible once again — three targets, two catches, 22 receiving yards plus five carries for a measly 13 rushing yards. The 49ers averaged just 4.4 yards per play when they handed the ball or threw it to Samuel, and a whopping 7.9 yards per play when they handed it or threw it to anyone else. The 49ers should have traded Samuel this past offseason. Instead, they restructured his contract in a way that will make him incredibly difficult to trade or release this coming offseason. Oops.
TIGHT ENDS: A-PLUS
One of the best games of George Kittle’s career. He had six catches for 151 yards. Last week, he had one catch for 7 yards. Afterward, he told the media he hardly ran any routes and that he was open the few times he didn’t have to block. Message received. Suddenly, Kyle Shanahan was calling all kinds of exotic screens and play-action passes for Kittle. Shanahan should do that every week. Kittle is the greatest tight end in franchise history and somehow he’s still in his prime.
OFFENSIVE LINEMEN: B-PLUS
They didn’t block particularly well in the run game, but they didn’t have Trent Williams, Aaron Banks or Ben Bartch and they still gave up just one sack. That’s impressive.
DEFENSIVE LINEMEN: A
Yetur Gross-Matos sacked Caleb Williams three times, Leonard Floyd sacked him twice and Maliek Collins sacked him once. The 49ers needed these three to step up while Nick Bosa is out and they did.
LINEBACKERS: A
They held Bears running back D’Andre Swift to just 38 rushing yards and gave up zero rushing touchdowns. And next week, they most likely will get Dre Greenlaw back. Good news.
DEFENSIVE BACKS: B
They gave up two touchdown passes and a quarterback rating of 116.9, but they also gave up just 134 yards through the air. Plus Talanoa Hufanga returned from a wrist injury and the 49ers defense improved dramatically with him on the field. The 49ers need to find a way to re-sign him this offseason. He’s the biggest playmaker in their secondary even when he’s playing with just one hand.
SPECIAL TEAMS: B
Jake Moody didn’t miss any field goals but he kicked two kickoffs short of the 20-yard line, which is a penalty. He needs to go this offseason.
COACHES: A-PLUS
Finally, Kyle Shanahan did the things we’ve been begging him to do all season: he stopped playing Kyle Juszczyk so much and instead mostly used one-back formations, he spread the ball around on offense and he called lots of screens and play-action passes which gave Brock Purdy plenty of easy throws. Where was this Kyle Shanahan all season? It seems like McCaffrey’s knee injury may have brought the best out of Shanahan because he finally accepted that McCaffrey won’t save him and the team this season and that he needs to build an offensive identity without him. And the offensive identity is a diverse, balanced attack featuring Kittle and Jennings, not Samuel and McCaffrey. If only Shanahan had this epiphany in September, the 49ers might not be 6-7. Now let’s see if he can keep it up this Thursday against the Rams, who beat the Bills today. The Bears are sorry team that has lost seven games in a row while the Rams have won five of their past seven. The 49ers will need another a-plus performance from Shanahan to win.
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