Inman: Time for 49ers to prove their ‘next man up’ can win — after losing three straight
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. – Brock Purdy took one last question at Sunday night’s postgame podium and looked as glum as expected after the 49ers’ third straight loss in a runaway season.
How odd does it feel to be missing Trent Williams, Nick Bosa, Brandon Aiyuk, and now Christian McCaffrey again?
“Obviously those are some guys that have a lot of credibility with their careers in what they’ve done and they’re the best of the best,” Purdy answered. “So when you don’t have those guys around and their presence, you can feel it’s not there. Yeah, it stinks.”
The 49ers (5-7) are not credible contenders anymore. They have lost three in a row, the last two on the road in 38-10 fashion in Green Bay and Sunday night’s 35-10 snowball to the AFC East-clinching Buffalo Bills.
“We definitely know we have some people out and stuff,” coach Kyle Shanahan said, “but we can play a lot better than that.”
Prove it.
Purdy, Shanahan and other 49ers insisted they have enough players to rebound from this. Five games are left. Which players remain for it?
McCaffrey, barring a miraculous playoff push, will be shut down with the posterior cruciate knee ligament injury that spurred his second-quarter exit Sunday night.
“Out of all people, we know how hard he worked to get back here, and what type of guy he is. You hate to see that (expletive),” cornerback Isaac Yiadom said. “But it’s football. Guys like JP (Mason) and (Isaac) Guerendo have to step in and step up.”
Mason and Guerendo did that after McCaffrey’s exit – and earlier this season as McCaffrey waited out eight games for his Achilles pain to subside.
“When you lose great players like that, it doesn’t help,” Shanahan said. “JP came in and ran well. Isaiah ran well, too. But losing Christian isn’t fun.”
The 49ers are not as deep at other positions, when this past offseason’s priorities were to supply depth in defense of their NFC crown.
Last year’s team avoided such a colossal wave of injuries. This team looks too battered to recover.
“I wouldn’t say that’s the case,” Deebo Samuel countered. “Injuries come with this game We’ve fought through injuries in previous years. We can’t just sit back and say, ‘We’re missing this person, we’re missing this person.’ At the end of the day, you have to be a man. Man up, go out here and make plays.”
The 49ers’ missing-man formation grows by the week, by the mainstay.
So what to do with Williams or Bosa? They’ve missed the past two games, both blowouts. And they’re definitely missed, all due respect to Jaylon Moore’s work at left tackle and Sam Okuayinonu at defensive end.
What about Fred Warner? After two months of playing with a fracture in his lower leg, Warner raced to the locker room in Sunday’s second quarter. “My forearms just seized up,” Warner said. “It was just a freak thing.”
Even stranger are all the strangers around him. He returned at the two-minute warning before halftime to try bailing out a skeleton crew, one that stood no chance against MVP candidate Josh Allen. The only starting defenders alongside Warner from last Super Bowl were cornerback Charvarius Ward and safety Ji’Ayir Brown.
It wasn’t an easy sight as Warner and McCaffrey scattered from Sunday’s snow globe.
“Christian left, and then I saw Fred run into the locker room. So when you lose two guys like that back to back, it’s not a very fun thing, especially because Bosa and Trent are not here, either,” George Kittle said. “It’s not a great feeling, but it’s football. People go down. We’ve had seasons where plenty of people have gone down and we’ve needed people to step up.”
Kittle, the 49ers’ most pronounced optimist, insisted the 49ers have NFL-caliber playmakers able to snap this losing streak and return to an NFC West race in which they trail first-place Seattle by just two games.
“While it feels dark and gloomy and absolutely probably depressing, honestly — I’ll feel that probably in a couple hours — but technically, we can still win out, and I do have the faith that we can do that.”