Mike Singletary thanked the Seahawks for their drubbing. "To Seattle I do want to say thank you very much for kicking our tails." Singletary is already framing the 49ers blowout loss as a wake-up call. But before we think about the future, we should go over what happened in Seattle. First, the 49ers probably came in arrogant instead of confident. The same thing happened last year after the 49ers started 3-1, which included the near win in Minnesota. Coming out of their fourth week bye, which gave them time to bask in their fast start, they were overconfident and we're blown out at home by Atlanta 45-10. The same thing happened in Seattle. "When you're a young football team, and you win four preseason games, you start to feel pretty good about yourself," Singletary said. Secondly, Seattle, whether it was the influence of former 49ers Michael Robinson and Jeff Ulbrich or not, knew how to defend San Francisco perfectly. Vernon Davis said Seattle completely took away the middle where he and Delanie Walker like to operate. Additionally, Seattle slanted their defensive linemen on run plays and they seemed to always slant right into where the 49ers were running. Seattle knew when and where to slant. Here are some other notes from Singletary after the game: Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ninerinsider/detail?entry_id=72138#ixzz0zNaqGhAc
Here's what I saw: 1. The running game sucked. Singletary kept trying to run Gore up the middle, but the line wasn't opening up any holes, so Gore couldn't get anything going. 2. Smith was solid in the first quarter, but he went to pieces after that. 3. Red zone offense was terrible. The three possessions in the red zone with only two field goals was atrocious. 4. The defense was great in the first quarter, but after Clements got the interference call, they went to pieces. So the running them in this game was that the Niners gave up. They got down, they started making mistakes, and they never recovered.
