Transcript of 49ers-Seahawks TNF Recap

You need one first down. You don't have McCafrey, you don't have Mitchell, you don't have J. P. Mason. It's Isaac Garendo. We like Ike. Can he do it? Hand off to Garendo off the right side. He runs for a first down, and he's going to score. He should go down, but he may just score his first touch down of the NFL. Garendo 10, full-down on the one-yard line. Perfect. The game is over. We've got a new closer, baby.

Isaac Garendo, the The Closer on Thursday night. Football gets the deal done for the San Francisco 49ers. What's up, everybody? Welcome to NFL Daily TNF Recap Edition. Patrick Claibon here in the garage, looking at a svelte and a much more comfortable-looking nick Shook as We had a comfortable and a fun game for a while in Seattle, nick.

Yeah, it looks like we were cruising toward a blowout, and then the Seahawks decided to wake up right when the Niners, they just went back to what they did the week before, which is let a team back into a game. But fortunately for Niners fans who have spent all week stressing about how can our team figure out how to close games. They found a way, and they did it in a number of different ways, including going to George Kittle. And then, as you just heard, leaning on the run game when they needed to bleed clock, Isaac Arendo coming through in a big spot with Jordan Mason sidelined with a shoulder injury, and the Niners move back to 500 in a big, big way.

A huge way. Ultimately, you heard there on the call from KNBR, they lose Jordan Mason in the game. He's got an injured shoulder. He's in and out of the There are a couple of times where it's like, All right, Jordan Mason's back. He actually had a nine-yard run. Then he's back to the sideline. A second half where Seattle has so many opportunities, nick, and that's going to be my big takeaway from the game. Not just the second half, the end of the first half, there were two attempts in the back of the end zone. One where D. K. Metcalf got Kevin Duranted. Also, Isiah Likely, where he's about an inch, that size 14 shoe, if it's a size 12.

Yeah, if he wears a 12.

You You go in, and it's a totally different type of situation. Not momentum. That's not important. Getting the points, right? That's what's actually important. You get the points going into the half, and then you could come out and you're in a better position. They were just playing from behind after that.

Yeah, It was a struggle for them. They go to halftime down 16 to three. They give up a countdown to go down 23 to three. And Lumenfield is pretty quiet. The 12s, silence, sitting on their hands, and for good reason, their offense hadn't really shown any reason to be excited about this game. It was very lops He added one dimensional all night. For the second straight week, the running game was a non-factor. Gino Smith ends up throwing 52 passes, but they find some life by going up tempo, which is really where they're at their best. It's not really a reliable strategy in the NFL. It's more of a collegiate thing than an NFL thing. But out of desperation, they start speeding up the offense. And before you know it, they're moving the football down the field. And next thing you know, it's 23 to 10 because LaVisca-Chanal responds to a George Kittle breakdown by taking it 97 yards through the dynamic kickoff for a countdown. Then they come back and score another countdown on a 13-play 94-yard drive that only took five and a half minutes. That's speaking to the up tempo. And suddenly it's 23 to 17, and they got a legit shot.

But the problem was the same thing that showed up early in the game. Gino Smith, when being asked to do so much, throws a crucial interception that kills their comeback hopes. And from there, they're just fighting their way back, and they can never catch up.

And you could see Jeno's frustration on the sideline after the play. And Kirk Herb Schreed, who was... Kirk was very critical of Dike throughout the game. I think the criticism of Dike Metcalf on that play was a little bit more legit because he's running the dig on the backside, and Renardo Green is clearly behind him. If you look at the angle from behind Jeno Smith, all you see is gigantic Dike Metcalf with nothing in between him and Jeno, and he appears to be open, but he's drifting back. It's this type of thing where you celebrated earlier in the season, where they're making a late read deep in the secondary, the Dike turns up field and goes for a countdown. Here he's starting to leak back, and it's the other side of the coin there, where if he's fading away and the defender is still tracing across the field, it winds up being a pass directly to Renardo Green.

Yeah, he opens it up. He opens up for the undercut, and he makes a great play and picks it off. And before you know it, the Seahawks have all the momentum, whether it matters or not. It's in their favor. And then next thing you know, they've turned the ball over and the 49ers capitalize. And I have to say this because this has been a big issue with them this season. And really, in Kyle Shanehan's entire coaching career is establishing leads and then failing to figure out how to put games away. Because of that pick, They then turn that into points, and it goes from 23 to 17 to 29 to 17. Kittle gets another shutdown pass, his second of the game, his second on third down in a goal-to-go situation. Then how does he celebrate? He finds his wife and Kyle Juszczek's wife in a suite right along the level there, and they go jump in the stands to celebrate with their wives. That was great, right? But for the Seahawks, disaster, catastrophe, because they had fought so hard to get back into the game, and the same mistake that hurt them early hurts them again.

I hate to put it on Gino because he's going to obviously take all the flak. It was an earned interception, but it's more of two guys not being on the same page, which was the story of the night for Dike Metcaf. He finishes with 11 targets. He had three catches, three catches on 11 targets. He was visibly frustrated in the first half. The sideline report from Kaylee Hartung was, I don't need to hear the pep talks. I just want to go make plays. You see that face right there if you're watching on YouTube? He's mad. They're down 13, nothing. He can't get anything going because the Niners are playing good coverage, but also the opportunities just aren't there. He did find a way to make a play late in the game, and even that one was called back by a penalty. So a really frustrating night for Dike, where he probably felt like he had some opportunities and ultimately couldn't deliver.

There is a universe out there somewhere where this is a seven catch for 176 yards in two-touchdown game for D. K. Metcalf. It's very easy. You don't have to change too much. The play you're mentioning, Kenny Walker, for some reason, was bouncing up and down after going out, Rod, and he never got set. And so it was a legal shift on a play where that provided no advantage. There's no advantage. It's not that he was doing some cheap motion and he's moving towards the line of scrimage. He's literally bouncing up and down instead of getting set. It wipes off a D. K. Td, the affermentioned B, touched down before the end of the first half, where it's stated and it's on record in this divisional rivalry, the 49ers secondary's methodology is to be annoying to D. K. Metcalf to try to get in his head. But aside from the circumstances going the other way. They also, as you mentioned, play very good defense on D. K. This isn't like some new thing. This is a trend that's continued. The rookie, Renardo Green, this is first time doing this, but it's consistent. I think team-wise, player-wise, specifically, they know specifically what they need to do to deal with Dike and Metcalf, and it just shows up over and over.

What it is is force a lot of tight windows. And Gino, to his credit, tried to force passes in there, and he actually got a lot of them on target. It's just that the window was so small that the likelihood of a catch was very low. There was one play in the first half. I think it was a third down attempt where he's blanketed. I mean, he's covered by two or three Niners, and the ball hits him in the hands, but he's also got a DB holding him around the waist. He's going looking for the flag. They don't get the flag because there's just so much traffic there to begin with. That was the story for the night for them. Because they're so one-dimensional right now, if Dike is not going, well, then all right, let's go to Tyler Locket, let's go to Jackson Smith and Jigba. But those are supplementary receivers in this offense. Dike is the focal point. If he's going, then your offense is going to go. Earlier in the season, they go play at New England, and he has a long shutdown catch. It seemed like it was just a week-by-week thing where there would be one long Dike shutdown reception per week.

You could bank on it, fantasy owners. It was going to happen. Sunrise, sunsets. Dk gets loose for 65, 70-yard countdown catch. That has not been the case in the last two weeks. That definitely wasn't the case on Thursday night, even when he did, which, by the way, that throw by Gino was a phenomenal play, where he's under pressure and he sees DK behind coverage and puts it over the top perfectly for him to catch. You think, Oh, they're back in it. Then it's wiped out by penalty. It's a tough spot for the Seahawks right now because we saw them go play against Detroit a couple of weeks ago and put up a ton of points and fall short. You know they're capable of that, but they're only capable of that when they have a balanced offense. Without this running game, which has been just very uninspired to me in the last couple of weeks, it was again, tonight. You're just asking too much of Gino Smith. Not that he's not able to do it. It's a lot to ask of any quarterback in the NFL.

And not just the offensive circumstance, over on the defense as well, where you've seen it now In games, you had Daniel Jones. In terms of adjusted yards per attempt, one of the best 10 games of Daniel Jones's entire career comes against Seattle. You literally saw Jared Goff not miss once. Here we are tonight where you've got Jordan Mason out. You need a stop. You've got three timeouts with under a minute 30 to go. Isaac Guerrero is running down the sideline, choosing not to score a countdown. The margins are very, very slim for this team. And as you mentioned, with Eugene Seyrel being back there and getting the lion's share of attention and the way we approach quarterbacking, there's a lot going on in Seattle that Gino is having to deal with.

Yeah, it's probably pretty startling to Seahawks fans who thought when they hired Mike McDonald, that their defensive issues would be fixed, but it was a personnel thing. And they tried to address it in the offseason, and they've been pretty banged up. But they did get some guys back tonight that were questionable to play. Boehe, Maffe, Julian Love being two of them. I wonder why on the countdown pass to Debo Samuel early in the game where Love fails to close in from the top, why Maffe is in coverage there? That's a guy that's a good pass rusher, right? Get after the quarterback, harass Brock Purdy, who did a great job of navigating the pocket, dancing around early in the game. A little unorthodox from him. But lean on your strengths. We know against the run, that's just not their strength. It is really disheartening to see them give up a long run at the end of the game to make that long effort to just score a shutdown to get within one possession, and then instantly it's wiped away by a long, gorendo run. That's really disheartening. That's a bummer. You hope it gets better when you get some of those guys back, but where they are right now, you see their weaknesses, and it's a struggle for them to win games.

Now they're three and three. They're in an NFC West that's very much for the taking with the Niners at three and three as well. But this is a turning point potentially for a team because you look at it and you go, Well, we still can't stop the run. We have to get better at that. If we don't get better at that, then teams are going to know how to beat us, and we're going to have a hard time. We're going to have to ask Gino to throw 50 passes a game as it stands right now. That makes for a tough outlook for the next month or so.

Yeah, and the 49ers make it tougher. I don't want to make it awful. There was a nice win, especially considering the way things ended with the Kaiser-White interception against the Arizona Cardinals last week. Brock comes back. He's 18 of 28, 255, three touch downs, two of those One was probably the throw of Brock Purdy's year down the sideline to the corner of the end zone to George Kittle. I had Kittle with another one, and then the one where Debo does all the work. I know the Purdy, Yack, conspiracy people are going to pounce on that one and be like, See, it's all a myth. But that was the first huge Yack play of the '49er season where Brock didn't have to do a lot. So, yeah, everybody's going to get one of those occasionally. The Seahawks, I'll approach this delicately, might have gotten one on the night. There was a punt by Mitch Wisnowski that went to D. Williams. His teammate, Devon Wotherspoon, pushed the gunner into him. And so it appeared on replay, which Terry McAulay pointed out on the broadcast, that D touched that ball. Then he got note from the folks in New York that they did not have the angle that we were able to get after the fact.

And so, yeah, the Seahawks even had another opportunity there that they couldn't take advantage of.

Yeah, we're still in the early ages of the replay Center and replay Assist. It is interesting that they did not get the angle that a lot of people saw on Amazon, but ultimately, they catch a break, right? And that happens in football games. One team will catch a break here and there. How do you capitalize? They didn't capitalize on that. So it didn't really end up mattering all that much. But in the moment, of course, you're like, Whoa, how did you miss that? The Seahawks are a sloppy team, and that's a play that happens across football at all levels. I'm not saying that that alone was sloppy. Devin Witherspoon is trying to block a guy. They run into the returner. It happens. It happens more than you think it does. But I also look at the numbers in this game and just trying to justify what I saw with my eyes, nine penalties for 69 yards. We talked That's not the one that wiped out the DPA had a breakdown catch. But there's false starts. There's all kinds of issues on both sides of the ball that just get in the way where the operation just was not clean.

And credit to the 49ers, because, again, we don't want to make this all about negative Seahawks talk. They did the good job of capitalizing and really finishing this game. I know we've talked about a little bit already, but this is a team that blew a game against the Cardinals last week. They were reeling after that. People are questioning Kyle Shanaher, and he's 38 no going into that situation when he's up 10 points in the fourth quarter, and they lose that game. So he's got that track record. But at the same time, we also know some of the games that he's lost in situations where he's held leads. This, tonight, on the road in a tough environment, when the other team fight their way back in the game, this has to be a feather in their cap. Look, you know what? We can finish games. We can finish games when we don't have Jordan Mason, when Debo Samuel might get a little dinged up again, as it seems he does every week, when things aren't necessarily going right for us, we have enough talent and enough moxie to overcome that and finish it off in the most traditional way possible.

Which is a fullback rushing TD.

In fact, let's go ahead and listen to the call of Juce getting in the end zone and going to greet his significant other.

Furty under center. Juce check goes into an eye, and he's down on the three-point stance. A true eye ahead of Garendo. Thieba comes in motion, left. They give it on fullback force. Juce check, milestone. Juce.

The Juce breaks loose. And so a nice moment for the Juce, the Hustek family. But now that I'm thinking about it, because Isaac Guerrero slowed up to burn clock there, he should have just gone ahead and punched that thing in there.

I knew that was going to be the discourse. I knew that was going to be the complaint online. Why not get Garendo his first countdown? He just sacrificed it to run clock, give him the ball. But then again, this is Big Brain Kyle Shanahan. What am I going to do on the goal line? They're expecting me to give it to Garendo. Let's give it to the fullback and catch him by surprise, and it works to perfection.

It's a funny... We've come a long way with Kyle Shanahan calling plays. I'm thinking about last year where he's absolutely force-feeding CMC to keep the streak alive in a game that was deep into garbage time. You never know what's coming. And you mentioned blowing leads late. The regular season stat is one thing. They've done it a couple of times in the big game, in the Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs. Who they have coming up next on October 20th. Looking forward to that one. The Thursday night game gives them a little bit of the break. And now, after losing three straight, Shook, it's the Falcons up next for the Seahawks, who are reeling right now, going up against the team that's not doing it on the score. But vibes-wise, the Falcons are hot right now.

Yeah, they're hot. They figured out how to put up points in the last couple of weeks. Kirk Cousin threw for over 500 yards recently. They're starting to unlock that offense. And I'm looking at the Seahawks last three games. You lose 42 to 29, 29 to 20, and 36 to 24. So we know you're going to end up in that 20 to 30 range of points, but is that going to be enough with this defense the way it is right now? That's the big question. I'm not sure. And then right after that, you get Buffalo, which they have their own issues to sort out after a 9 for 30 performance by Josh Allen in Houston last weekend. But that's a tough couple of games stretched. And suddenly, you could go from three and 2-3 and five and on this long losing streak. And it's crisis mode in Seattle, so they got to get back on the horse and find a way to win before long.

It's getting late early in Seattle as we roll through this 2024 NFL season. That's the Thursday night football recap. Nick Shook, any final thoughts before we say goodbye to the people, man?

It was a great game. I thought it was going to be a boring game, and I was glad we got entertained. But my heart's also with my baseball team. Cleveland Guardian's come back and beat the Detroit Tiger's 5 to 4 to force a game five. I know this is a football podcast, but go guards, baby. I knew it.

We love baseball. We love you guys. We'll see you next time on NFL Daily.