Heading into the 49ers' Christmas Eve showdown against the Baltimore Ravens, Brock Purdy led the NFL in most metrics for a quarterback this season and was the leading candidate for NFL MVP honors.
But Baltimore's dominant defense forced the normally composed signal-caller to have the worst game of his young career on Monday at Levi's Stadium, including four interceptions in San Francisco's 33-19 loss.
After the game, Ravens players and coaches explained how they managed to knock Purdy out of the game in the highly anticipated matchup.
“The rush and coverage work together and we all understand that. “We just understood that we had to stop the run and be able to make plays,” Ravens linebacker Patrick Queen said. “We capitalized on the plays we were able to make and just took off from there. “We saw a couple of times that the rush in coverage didn't work. They had a few plays here and there [where] we didn't tackle it, or we simply missed the reporting assignment.
“When we see players working together like my interception or Kyle.” [Hamilton]“The interceptions, the plays everyone made, it was just our two front and back lines working together.”
The 49ers entered the deciding “Monday Night Football” matchup with a six-game winning streak, previously defeating the Arizona Cardinals 45-29, the Seattle Seahawks 28-16, the Philadelphia Eagles 42-19 and the Seahawks 31 :13 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 27 -14 and Jacksonville Jaguars 34-3.
Queen weighed in on why he thought the 49ers were able to beat other teams by such a large margin and why their matchup was a completely different story.
“We play a type of football that people don’t want to play,” Queen said. “Everyone wants to be out here.” [being] cute, playing basketball on grass and stuff, and us [are not] with all that. You can do all of that. Honestly, we're going to slap you on every play. We don't care about all the pretty things you do, the gimmicky things. You still have to line up and play football. You still have to be touched, so that's our attitude. That’s how we want to perform and just punch people in the mouth.”
“They definitely do,” Queen added when asked if he thinks the 49ers play basketball on grass, “but they have an aggressive attitude.” I can honestly say they're probably the most aggressive team are that we have [have] played so far.”
Ravens coach John Harbaugh believes it was a concerted effort to get the win.
“Defensively, it was all three levels,” Harbaugh said. “We had pressure. We had the running game under control, [and] that helped us a lot. But we had pressure. I think our coverage was just fantastic and we covered for a long time, so we forced them to hold the ball, forced them to make some bad shots and we had the balls in our hands.
“We deflected balls, we had balls in the air and the guys caught them and that helps too. It was just a complete team effort on defense to get those interceptions.”
Baltimore defensive lineman Jadeveon Clowney attributed the unit's success in defending Purdy to working together on rush and coverage and praised defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald for putting them in “good situations to go out and make plays.” .
Entering the evening, Purdy had seven interceptions in 14 games. He had four in Monday's game.
Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey admitted they understood the challenge Purdy posed and wanted to do their best to limit him before ultimately doing much more.
“We tried it. He reads everything correctly,” Humphrey said. “It was really difficult to kind of flesh him out [out]. We felt like if we could take the lead that might be our best chance. We managed to take the lead and try to turn him into flesh and blood, but it's hard to stop this guy. He somehow reads everything correctly. Although he made mistakes tonight, he doesn't usually make too many mistakes.
“[We were] actually just fly to the ball. Kyle's [Hamilton]'S [interceptions], he wanted to attack the quarterback and then got a pick – things like that, just running to the ball. 'B-Steve' [Brandon Stephens] tipped it. A lot of things went our way tonight, but it was a total team effort to just run to the ball, hustle and try to beat fire against fire. This team…I think everyone's a little sore. There are a lot of teams that want to be physical. This team is a real, physical team [and] It was really good for us to come out and put on a show.”
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