What a difference a few days makes. After the crushingly-disappointing defeat at home to the New York Giants on Sunday, the San Francisco 49ers rebounded with a physical performance more reminiscent of their demolition of the Buffalo Bills only a week earlier. The balance and passing game weren’t there, but up front their offensive line took apart one of the best run defense in the entire league. Returning to basics, and limiting backup QB Colin Kaepernick to one snap, the 49ers simply steam rolled the Seahawks’ vaunted run defense. The scoreboard may not lead you to believe it, but the 49ers’ offensive line controlled this game in what might have been one of the best back-and-forth matchups of the entire season.
That the Seahawks were so physically dominated by the 49ers' running game is disappointing on two counts. For one, their run defense has been proven to be fallible, though to be fair they were up against this season’s top offensive line. More importantly they now drop to 0-3 in the division. The Seahawks now leave themselves needing to sweep the second half of their divisional schedule to ensure they don’t lose tiebreakers to every single team in the surprisingly competitive and strong NFC West.
The dominance of the 49ers' offensive line was the headline from this game, so let’s take a closer look at that dominance and some of the other notable performances from a victory that immediately got their season back on track.
Seattle – Three Performances of Note
Gutted
Six times in this game the Seattle defense allowed a 49er ballcarrier to pick up 5 yards on a run play before a single Seahawk defender touched them. For the game, they allowed 3.6 yards per backfield carry before contact. Those are not stats that you expect to see from Seattle’s run defenders, and their defensive line were the primary culprits as they were rendered inactive by the 49ers’ offensive line. Each starter on the Seahawks’ defensive line recorded the lowest single-game run defense grade ever earned individually in the five years we have been grading games here at Pro Football Focus — this was dominance that we have simply never seen imposed on this Seahawks defense before. The only saving grace, and the reason they didn’t surrender the sort of yardage the Bills did a fortnight ago, was that their linebackers were solid behind this defensive mess. Their trio of linebackers didn’t miss a tackle in run defense and combined to record 16 stops. They were sucked into their share of plays to spring the 49ers immediately into the secondary, but without this solid tackling the Seahawks simply wouldn’t have been this close to the 49ers on the scoreboard.
A Counterpunch but No Knockout Blow
The 49ers’ running game wasn’t the only one to click. The Seahawks' own running game also enjoyed a measure of success. Backup running back Robert Turbin again proved his value (in the running game at least) spelling Marshawn Lynch, and sprang one of his four carries for a long gain by bouncing to the outside of a 49ers' defense that was well sealed by a block from Ben Obamanu. However, it was Lynch who once again took the starring role and put up a rare 100-yard rushing game on the 49er defense. Lynch broke two tackles and topped his season average by collecting in excess of 3 yards per carry after contact. Up front, Lynch was led by a star performance from C Max Unger (+4.0 run block), who for the fifth straight week graded positively as a run blocker. Unger surrendered very little to Isaac Sopoaga in the run game, and consistently got the better of him to unlock the middle of the 49er defense for Lynch, who collected 6.4 yards per carry off his hip. What the Seahawks lacked was that one big play to jump them back into the game. They had two rushes of 15 yards, but nothing to really put the 49er defense to the sword.
Missed Opportunities Haunt the Seahawks
You don’t get many opportunities against the San Francisco defense, so when they come along you must make them count. The Seahawks didn’t do that in this game, and dropped four passes, more than 20% of the total aimed passes by Russell Wilson. To make it worse, the first two were on deep shots where Wilson put the ball in his receivers’ hands behind the defense, and he final two came on third downs — one such drop by Golden Tate cost the Seahawks a prime opportunity to extend their three-point half time lead. Certainly Wilson is not blameless in this game. In fact, the only redeeming feature of his third-quarter interception was that it wasn’t as bad, or as directly costly, as Alex Smith’s appalling red-zone interception. However, when you throw the ball as infrequently and inefficiently as the Seahawks, you can’t waste golden opportunities like they did in this game. The drops by Turbin in the first quarter and Evan Moore in the second prevented the Seahawks from not only collecting big gains, but potentially backing-off the 49er defense to create more space underneath, as well as offering the running game even more room to work. The Seahawks spectacularly claimed a number of opportunities in the passing game in their comeback win over New England, but last night that poise escaped them with, arguably, those chances falling to the wrong players.
San Francisco – Three Performances of Note
Dominating Up Front
The 49ers' crushing offensive line display against the Bills was all too quickly forgotten after the disappointing loss at home to the Giants. Well, they served to remind everyone of just how good their offensive line been so far this season. Between their five offensive linemen and Vernon Davis, the 49ers accumulated a run blocking grade of +14.5, a level of dominance you simply wouldn’t expect against a run defense as good as Seattle’s. They made life easy at times for Frank Gore (+2.0 rushing) by opening gaps in the Seattle defense that immediately sprung him into acres of space. Special mention has to go to Joe Staley (+3.4) and Jonathan Goodwin (+4.4). Staley surrendered only two stops in an extremely consistent performance against a number of Seattle defenders, while Goodwin consistently and conclusively got the better of Brandon Mebane through the middle. The 49ers face another tough test next week against the Arizona defense, but, in their current form, would anyone bet against them opening up that defense using their exceptional trap plays to exploit the Cardinals’ aggressive upfield defense?
The Forgotten Man
If you’d have asked anyone at the end of last season whether Justin Smith would be an under-the-radar performer after seven games of the 2012 regular season, you would have got some peculiar looks. But, after the start to the season that JJ Watt has put in, and the comparatively inconsistent start from Smith, the 49ers' All-Pro defensive end finds himself firmly in the shadows. However, Smith is still putting in displays of real quality, and that includes this game (+3.1). Smith collected another four defensive stops this week, taking his season total to 20, and he was denied a sack by his fellow lineman Ray McDonald jumping offside midway through the first quarter. Smith is not providing the same level of dominance just yet in the regular season, especially as a pass rusher, but his run defense is still excellent and he is still a pivotal cog in an excellent San Francisco run defense.
Culliver’s Travails
After a down week against the Giants, a trait shared with much of the 49er team, Chris Culliver (+2.0) rebounded with a solid performance to get his impressive sophomore season back on track. Culliver’s work in this game shows how a couple of plays can swing a corner’s day in an instant. Twice his metrics were spared by untimely drops from Seahawk receivers. On the first play of the second quarter, Wilson got the ball over Culliver to Moore who promptly dropped the pass up the right sideline. Meanwhile, the second drop came early in the third quarter as Golden Tate, of all people, dropped a slant that would have kept a Seahawks drive alive. However, Culliver wasn’t beaten on a regular basis, instead he got his hands to two passes to balance the plays that he allowed Seahawk receivers to get their hands to. His perfectly timed pass defense on Sidney Rice prevented a conversion on the Seahawks’ penultimate drive, while in the second quarter he took away a chance for points by breaking up a deep ball aimed inside the 49ers’ 10-yard line, and inside the final two minutes of the half. Culliver’s pass defenses and the Seahawks timely drops helped ensure that for the fifth time this season Culliver allowed fewer than 20 receiving yards in a game. For the season Culliver is allowing a reception once every 16.5 snaps, which puts him in the exalted company of the likes of Champ Bailey, Lardarius Webb and Charles Tillman.
Game Notes
— For the third time this year, Randy Moss was held to a solitary catch as Alex Smith badly missed the opportunity to get him his first touchdown catch since the opening day of the season.
— Bobby Wagner marked his third week in a three-down role for the Seahawks with a career-high eight defensive stops. In his past two games Wagner has more than doubled his season total with 15 of his 29 defensive stops.
— He may have been held without a catch — he wasn’t even targeted — but Vernon Davis still had a positive impact on the game. His +1.1 grade as a run blocker is the sixth time in seven games Davis has graded positively as a run blocker.
PFF Game Ball
Picking an individual performance out of the 49ers’ running game is a tough task. There are legitimately six players who could feel that they should be getting this game ball. However, for his sheer dominance of Brandon Mebane, the PFF Game ball this week goes to Jonathan Goodwin.
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