Bodily San Francisco 49ers discover identification in victory over Rams – San Francisco 49ers Weblog

SANTA CLARA, California – For the first nine weeks, the San Francisco 49ers were a team with no identity.

There was little doubt who the Niners wanted to be – an approximation of the 2019 roster that relied on physical running play and a dominant defensive front – but there was little evidence that they could regain that form. Until Monday evening.

Whether it’s some kind of curse, sheer coincidence, or something else entirely, the Los Angeles Rams game has a certain way of allowing the Niners to find themselves for at least one night.

That was the case at Levi’s Stadium on Monday, when coach Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers maintained their position over Sean McVay and the Rams with a convincing 31:10 win. It was the fifth win for the 4-5 Niners in a row against the Rams.

For a team that had no answer to exactly what this season was all about, it was the kind of performance that provided a resounding answer.

“Honestly, it felt a lot like the Super Bowl year,” said quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. “This year we felt like we ran the ball 30 times every time. If we can do that and be successful in third place, that’s a good recipe for us.”

The 49ers pushed the Rams from the first snap and took their first possession 93 yards in 18 games in a whopping 11 minutes and 3 seconds. It was the longest run of the season by an NFL team and the longest inaugural run by a team since 2002, according to ESPN Stats & Information Research.

“Every time we sit there and drink Gatorade, when they play that ball, that’s great football,” said linebacker Fred Warner.

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That drive set the tone when San Francisco followed with a 91-yard drive in 11 games in just 7:52 minutes. In a normal game, Shanahan says he’d like to hit 30 rush attempts, but he challenged his team to hit 40 on Saturday, which it had only done six more times since Shanahan’s acquisition in 2017.

After two drives, the Niners had already made 21 rush attempts. When it was done they had 44 rushes for 156 yards. Excluding knee-downs, the Niners ran from scratch 68% of their games, the highest in any game in the past 20 seasons.

Call it 3.5 meters and a cloud of fog.

“That’s nice of us,” said Trent Williams. “We like to stay balanced, but we’re more inclined to run. So if we can keep the chains moving, averaging 4 to 5 yards per carry, that’s us. This is 49ers football.”

And while the defense had a few hiccups, there were two takeaways as the offense didn’t avoid sales and came up behind Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford as he took the lead.

As the icing on the cake, 49ers recipient Deebo Samuel continued to assert himself as a legitimate superstar. He finished with five catches for 97 yards and one touchdown and added another 36 yards on five carries with another score.

In an NFC where the last two places are always up for grabs, the Niners are in the middle of the race with an upcoming track against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Minnesota Vikings and Seattle Seahawks. These teams are a combined 9-18 to 10 weeks.

“It gives me a lot of confidence,” said the tight end George Kittle. “This is the team that we think we have and we haven’t played at that level Having eliminated ball losses and being able to “get two” changes the game of football. And it gave us the opportunity not to take our foot off the accelerator and just keep rolling. “

Now the Niners have to prove this was no longer of their Rams voodoo magic and the team that showed up on Monday night is here to stay.

Describe the game in two words: Need to have. After an embarrassing loss to Arizona last week, the 49ers looked more like a runaway team than one to make a statement on national television, but they deserve full credit for having made such an impressive recovery .

Buy Jimmie Wards Performance: It had been 1,800 days since Ward had a bug. Ward ended that drought when he intercepted Stafford to complete the Rams’ inaugural voyage.

Ward didn’t wait nearly as long for an encore. On the next run in Los Angeles, a Stafford pass slipped through the hands of Tyler Higbee and Ward as he raced 27 yards for a touchdown and a 14-0 lead.

At the start of the game on Monday, Ward had two tips in 85 career games. He achieved that in about 11 minutes when returning from a quad injury.

QB allocation: Garoppolo’s final numbers – 15 out of 19 for 182 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions for a rating of 141.7 – won’t excite anyone, but he did everything that was asked of him.

Garoppolo tossed the ball quickly and accurately, was superb on the third and fourth down (7-of-9 for 123 yards and two touchdowns) and, perhaps most importantly, handled the ball.