Well, that sucked. Nick Mullens appeared to be overcome by the bright lights of Sunday Night Football as he played a horrible game. He threw a pick in the red zone as the 49ers were driving to take the lead in the 2nd quarter. A throw that was directed at no one in particular. He also fumbled on a hit, and later threw a pick 6 that was directly to the linebacker. He wa under pressure a lot, and missed wide open guys on many passes. The wheel route pass that he missed by mile would have gotten us about 50 yards on our opening drive, but no.

The offensive line also sucked. Trent Williams got beaten like a drum, and had an illegal motion to boot. Mike McGlinchey was repeatedly beaten on the edge, and our interior line didn’t fare much better. Penalties and missed blocks were the order of the day.

The defense struggled with Carson Wentz as he scrambled out of trouble, and when about to be sacked, actually got rid of the ball to avoid sacks. Something that appears to escape any of our three quarterbacks. Still and all, they played well enough to win this game fairly easily, and the one bad play was because when we are down to Dontae Johnson as our RCB, expect a big play by the opposition. K’Won Williams was having a nice game, but he got hurt in the 3rd quarter, and I sure wish we would roll Ward to help him.

And that leaves head coach Kyle Shanahan. I’m really confused by his decisions at times. The biggest play of the game turned out to the the stupid drop-kick by Robbie Gould. The 49ers had the 2 minute warning, and 2 timeouts. The play is to kick the ball out of the end zone and pin the Eagles deep as they try to run the clock out. Instead, we do a stupid onsides punt and give the ball to the Eagles at the 50. We stop them, and instead of Philly punting from their 25, they are punting from midfield. Natch we get the ball on the 10 and The Beater did his best to get us downfield, but we came up short. He also has a propensity to go away from plays that WORK. We ran a jet sweep to Deebo that got 10 yards, a misdirection sweep with Kittle that got 8, and the 38 yard TD with Aiyuk. So, natch we never tried those plays ever again. Too many 1st down runs up the middle.

So, Mullens got pulled, and the Beater actually came in and gave us a spark as the Eagles let us throw underneath at will, and we scored fairly quickly. Still though, the Beater made a bonehead mistake by not running in the 2 point conversion as he had a clear lane, and instead forced a pass to Kittle that fell incomplete. We would have been down by 3 instead of 5.

So, yeah, a lot of goats. A lot of bad penalties. A horrendous performance by our backup QB, and a pass rush that was a bit anemic, and very inconsistent play calling.

There were some highlights though. Brandon Aiyuk had the play of the day on a 38 yard run on a lateral pass that ended with Aiyuk hurtling an Eagle defender at the 5 for the score. George Kittle had a nice night with 15 catches for a whopping 183 yards and a TD. But the run game was nonexistent except for those misdirection plays that WORKED. And the pass pro was awful.

We may win more games than the Jets at their house. But we still need to find a way to win at home.