FULL BOX RESULTS
Brock Purdy passes another test for the 49ers winning NFC West. When Kyle Shanahan plays, he’s one of the best play callers in the NFL. And based on what we’ve seen over the past 11 days, Purdy seems like the real deal. These are not mutually exclusive. Yes, most of Purdy’s passes went to open receivers, but he still makes the throws — and even in tricky spots. That’s what counts, and it helped give San Francisco the NFC West title with Thursday night’s win. Purdy started sharply, scoring on his first 11 passes (another was erased by a penalty during that series). The highlight was a Purdy beauty on a touchdown pass to George Kittle, who faked two screens before firing the ball on a delay route to the open tight end, which did the rest of the work on the 28-yard result. Purdy got away with a few passes late in the first half and threw an interception right into the chest of the Seahawks’ Quandre Diggs late in the second quarter. But Purdy got back on track and handled a few tricky spots — perhaps where other young quarterbacks might melt a little — and played another clean, strong game overall. In three (almost full) games, he’s thrown six TDs and one INT and completed almost 67% of his passes.The Seahawks’ collapse can’t be attributed solely to Geno Smith. Many forces were working against Smith against the 49ers, and let’s face it: These problems have been brewing for a while. While the Seahawks’ defense largely did what it had to do to keep them in the game, the offense fell short with two field goals. The Seahawks’ offensive line allowed three sacks (and should have been more) and nine QB hits. Kenneth Walker gave the backfield a little spark, but it was clear he wasn’t entirely healthy and had to limp off the field at one point. Travis Homer’s fumble was killer. DK Metcalf had a quiet seven catches and was flagged for 15- and 10-yard penalties. As in the last few weeks, Smith has not given his best. But he wasn’t nearly the reason Seattle lost. He made some absolute shots against the 49ers and was still trying to talk his teammates into a late fight, which they did. The Seahawks touchline’s reaction to Smith being hit out of bounds by the 49ers’ Talanoa Hufanga shows you how much Smith’s teammates respect him. Now they’ll have to help him a little bit more if the Seahawks are to earn a wildcard berth.George Kittle being healthy makes a big difference to the 49ers. Seattle got lucky when Kittle missed the 49ers’ first matchup between the two teams, but Thursday was his revenge. Kittle jabbed the Seahawks for two long touchdowns — 28 and 54 yards, and he was wide open on both — to open the game for the 49ers. He would end the game with four catches for 93 yards, his highest mileage since Week 7. The question with Kittle is almost always his health. He plays a rough football and got beat up pretty badly over the years going back to college. But when available and close to full strength, Kittle is almost as good as any tight end in the league, except perhaps for Travis Kelce. Kittle is also great at blocking, making him a complete player and a perfect match for this system. And while Purdy looks damn good, the more important point is that the two work well together and the 49ers are just a far more dangerous team when Kittle is out there.Seahawks will regret missed opportunities early on. The Seahawks were outplayed early on but found themselves trailing just 7-3 late in the second quarter. At this point, a pretty brutal pair of games made it that much harder for Seattle to stage a comeback. The first was Diggs’ dropped INT; it was a game he had to make and there was room for a return as well. The second came five games later when Seahawks running back Travis Homer spat out a fumble near midfield that was recovered by the 49ers and eventually converted to a touchdown. That became apparent when the 49ers took their first possession of the second half and went down the field with it. What could have been a relatively close game was suddenly an 18-point hole for the home team. And things could have been worse if Deommodore Lenoir’s would-be pick six hadn’t been knocked off the board in the next series. What to…Rough-the-passer calls are still not smooth. Grady Jarrett’s firing of Tom Brady. Chris Jones’ firing at Derek Carr. Jaelen Phillips fired Justin Herbert. All were wiped out for very dubious rough calls. These helped make this a hot topic at the recent owners meeting, with a discussion on whether it was possible to make the passer’s scrub auditable. The latest controversial incident occurred Thursday when Nick Bosa fired Geno Smith … and then was fined 15 yards for what appeared to be just football. The officiating crew can justify Bosa knocking Smith down, but you could see Bosa let go of his left arm as he went down. What else can Bosa realistically do in this situation? However, it’s worth noting that overall roughing calls are down compared to last season. 72 of them were called in the first 208 games this season (an average of one every 2.9 games) through Week 14. Last year, in 278 games, there were 154 roughing calls total, or one every 1.8 games. So they’re less common, but still occasionally controversial, and we’ve had enough big ones that the rule might change at some point.Next-gen stats of the game: George Kittle was 8.8 yards wide when the pass arrived on his 54-yard TD reception, his second wide-open TD on Thursday (more than 5 yards wide). Kittle gained 23 of those yards after the catch, gaining plus 11 yards more than expected. The touchdown probability on the game was only 14.7%.
NFL Research: Christian McCaffrey had his third straight game with a touchdown Thursday, the first time he has done so since hitting two TDs in all three games he played in his shortened 2020 season due to injury.
