Survive and advance, right?
Yes, with a .500 record entering the second half of the season, the 49ers are certainly not in a position to worry about style points following Sunday’s 23-20 win over the Buccaneers.
But I’m worried about them, and you should be, too.
The 49ers have played nine games. When will we see a team that looks worthy of Super Bowl contention?
We didn’t see that level of play before the team’s bye week.
And we didn’t see it upon their return from the bye on Sunday.
Perhaps it’s coming down the line. Maybe it’s not.
At this juncture, it has to be fair to wonder if such a form will ever come for a team that cannot seem to get out of its own way, even on their best days.
Yes, I understand that Sunday was the first game with superstar running back Christian McCaffrey back in the fold. He’s a pretty important player to the team’s title hopes.
But even as the reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year looked like his old self after missing the first two months of the season, his performance didn’t take the team to another, superior level. No, it merely kept this team’s head above water for another week.
Merely surviving, week after week, will only take you so far.
And it certainly won’t take you as far as the Niners want to go.
This team has some brilliant players. Brock Purdy’s second half was excellent on Sunday. George Kittle remains the best tight end in the game. McCaffrey is one-of-one. Receivers Jauan Jennings and rookie Ricky Pearsall are big-time weapons.
And yet, amid all that, the Niners found themselves in a slog of a game against the Bucs. One could argue that, despite doubling Tampa Bay’s yardage, the Niners deserved to lose, as they played overly conservative football, missed three field goals, fumbled away a punt, and committed four defensive penalties after the two-minute warning, setting up a game-tying field goal for the Bucs with 41 seconds remaining in the game.
If this is the best the 49ers have to offer coming off a bye week, it’s not good enough.
If this is what they present in the second half of the season, merely making the playoffs will be a struggle.
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George Kittle — who was outstanding on Sunday, with a great scramble-drill touchdown catch — tried to spin the slop-fest as a positive. Surely, someone will buy what he’s selling. It’s better than reality, after all.
“Being able to deal with all of that and still come out with a win,” Kittle said. “That reminds me of 2019 — it’s not going to be pretty, but you just have to find ways to win no matter how ugly they are sometimes.”
And yes, those NFC champion Niners did have some tight wins in the regular season. The shootout in New Orleans and the games with the Rams and Seahawks in Weeks 16 and 17 come to mind.
But the Niners also had blowout wins over quality opponents that season, including a 29-point win over Green Bay. But they also took care of inferior opponents with blowout wins. Even though the Niners had drafted No. 2 overall in April, they looked and played like the NFC’s No. 1 team.
When have these Niners looked like a top contender, much less the No. 1 seed, this season? A quarter here or there, sure, but for a full 60 minutes? It hasn’t happened.
And they’re running out of time to show that level of play. Sunday’s game — off the bye, with McCaffrey back in the fold, and going up against a team that had just played an overtime Monday night game on the road — would have been a perfect opportunity for the Niners to make a statement and tell the NFL that they are back and ready to fulfill expectations.
Instead, they planted a different flag: They played another unserious game.
How many times have they done that this season?
At what point does that make them an unserious team?