49ers Lose 31-17 To Banged-up Cardinals

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By JOSH DUBOW AP Pro Football WriterNovember 7, 2021 astatine 7:17 pm

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — Any encouragement the San Francisco 49ers mightiness person gained from past week’s triumph astatine Chicago was wiped retired successful a hurry against a short-handed Arizona squad missing astir of its apical playmakers.

Now, aft the 31-17 defeat to the Kyler Murray-less Cardinals connected Sunday near the Niners winless successful 4 location games, a play that began with precocious expectations is spiraling retired of control.

“It’s beauteous embarrassing,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “It’s unacceptable for sure. This is 1 of those that you person to determination past quick, due to the fact that it was embarrassing conscionable defensively what we enactment connected tape. It’s thing you privation to get that sensation retired of your rima and get close backmost to work.

The 49ers (3-5) made plentifulness of errors connected Sunday that proved to beryllium acold excessively overmuch to overcome, adjacent against a squad missing Murray and receivers DeAndre Hopkins and A.J. Green.

The Niners mislaid a brace of fumbles aft large gains successful the archetypal half, were repeatedly gashed connected defence and fell into a large spread they couldn’t get retired of arsenic they mislaid for the 5th clip successful six games to autumn 4 1/2 games down the Cardinals successful the NFC West.

“It’s pugnacious erstwhile you crook the shot implicit doubly aboriginal connected erstwhile you’re moving the shot aft explosive plays,” choky extremity George Kittle said. “That benignant of conscionable kills the squad and doesn’t assistance our defence retired astatine all. We started with a mates of three-and-outs. That’s pugnacious for (the defense). It’s a batch of shot early. As an offense, we person to execute better. We person to instrumentality attraction of the football.”

Kittle, successful his archetypal crippled backmost from a calf injury, mislaid a fumble connected the 2nd thrust of the game. Brandon Aiyuk mislaid another two drives aboriginal and the Niners fell down 17-0 successful the 2nd quarter.

Kittle caught a TD pass from Garoppolo precocious successful the archetypal fractional to springiness San Francisco immoderate life, but that was rapidly extinguished erstwhile James Conner caught a abbreviated walk successful abstraction from Colt McCoy and raced 45 yards for a TD on the opening thrust of the 2nd fractional for Arizona.

“Obviously, we got to play a batch better,” manager Kyle Shanahan said. “I talked to the defence a batch astir immoderate of the things that you guys saw retired there. Offensively, I thought we had our opportunity. We conscionable had to play and marque those plays similar we did past week. I thought it was determination for us, particularly successful the archetypal fractional and we didn’t get it done and it got america successful the spread and we weren’t capable to flooded it.”

Shanahan said the show came arsenic a astonishment aft the Niners played good past week successful a 33-22 triumph astatine Chicago and had a bully week of practice.

San Francisco past appeared to drawback a interruption with the Cardinals playing without Murray and his apical 2 wideouts, but it didn’t help.

Shanahan said helium warned the players not to person a letdown due to the fact that of those injuries. The defence came retired level anyway.

“That’s thing that I aggressively talked astir past night,” helium said. “For those guys to fto down connected it, I deliberation it came down to, you guys saw however we tackled retired there. We didn’t halt the tally and we didn’t halt those screens. When you’re giving up immoderate explosive screens and each of that escaped yardage, it wouldn’t of mattered who was playing quarterback. We made it highly casual connected them.”

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