Color me a little surprised about how effective the Denver defense was at stopping the 49ers for most of the day. Denver played us a lot like Seattle, at least early on, in trying to take away the big plays, and running a 4-man front. It was very effective through the 1st half amid stalled drives and a blocked FG. But the offense finally wore down the Broncos and were able to score 21 points in the 2nd half to pull away from them.

But as usual it came with a cost. Lot of punts, lots of hitting and lots of injuries. The worst being Juice, who sustained a sprained knee, but avoided tearing anything. He’s out ‘a few’ to ‘several’ weeks. Sigle hurt his ankle, and Upton Stout hurt his shoulder. Both. appear day-to-day. Warner was battling flu symptoms but gutted it out.

On the Broncos side, they lost Patrick Surtain II to what looked like a calf pull. Not the achilles apparently but he’s a big piece of their pass defense. They lost their other CB Riley Moss to a rib injury.

All in all a tough win over what looks like one of the better teams in the AFC. Our defense was pretty stout in the face of losing everyone on the D line. The secondary was especially stout at stopping big plays, and keeping Nix to short completions. Yeah, we gave up a lot of passes but they didn’t go very far.

And Shanny called a super conservative game to start as we ran early and often to little positive results. He did make very solid adjustments to the play calling as he caught Denver in a blitz that sprung Kittle for a 56 yard TD scamper, and a nifty 1 yard TD pass to Deebo.

Pissed the Eagles shat the bed against the Rams. Onward to Seattle for the big showdown.