SANTA CLARA – The ghosts of past playoff collapses haunted the 49ers this season, so much so that a 6-11 record assured them of no postseason horrors this year.
Three of their first five defeats came by blowing fourth-quarter leads against NFC West teams, and the 49ers never recovered.
“When I go back to the hardest thing for me this year was those three games I’ve talked to you guys about,” coach Kyle Shanahan said Wednesday. “… We should have won those games and we lost them at the end by I thought at our own mistakes.”
Shanahan said those words sitting next to general manager John Lynch in the Levi’s Stadium auditorium. In their previous press conference together at training camp, Lynch professed how the 49ers “adding finishers.”
“It means finishing the day, it means finishing a meeting, finishing a game, finishing a series, finishing a season,” Lynch said July 23. “That’s important in this league because this league is a grind, and you need people that can close things out. I think as close as we’ve come, I think you just keep adding those type of people and you give yourself a chance.”
The 49ers didn’t add the right people and/or didn’t learn from previous mistakes.
They got outscored 165-88 in the fourth quarter, their worst differential (77 points) in at least 25 years – and probably back another 20 years through their Super Bowl dynasty. Only the 2017 Colts had a worse mark the past 10 seasons, at minus-84 points.
Strong finishes dominated during the 49ers’ 1980s Super Bowl dynasty under Joe Montana, with his 25 fourth-quarter comebacks or game-winning drives between 1981-90. Nowadays, fourth-quarter collapses have evolved into a reliable, systemic issue, whether it’s a lack of stamina, focus, or the clutch gene from all involved parties.
This season’s late-game troubles surfaced in Week 3, when a 10-point lead was erased in the final 6 ½ minutes of a 27-24 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. Two weeks later, the Arizona Cardinals overcame a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to win 24-23 at Levi’s Stadium.
A third NFC West win vanished when a 17-13 lead was spoiled by a Seattle Seahawks’ last-second touchdown run for a 20-17 defeat at Levi’s Stadium on Nov. 17. On Dec. 12, as De’Vondre Campbell refused to enter as a 49ers defensive substitute, their 6-3 fourth-quarter lead flipped into a 12-6 home loss.
“You don’t want to have excuses. A lot of our finishers weren’t out there,” said Lynch, alluding to the 49ers’ casualties that included Christian McCaffrey, Brandon Aiyuk, Trent Williams and Dre Greenlaw.
“We still had opportunities. We still put ourselves in good position and we couldn’t get it done, so we have to own that as a team,” Lynch added. “That’s why we’re 6-11. We have a high standard, we had high expectations, we fell short of that. And it’s our job to fix that.”
Lynch insisted the 49ers have “finishers” on the roster, and that may be true. They just need to get healthy, which is expected to happen next season with McCaffrey (Achilles, knee), Aiyuk (knee) and Williams (ankle); Greenlaw is a pending free agent whose Achilles comeback was halted after 34 snaps last month.
Greenlaw ruptured his left Achilles in last season’s Super Bowl, and the 49ers’ onslaught of bad news followed – and familiar late-game choke jobs.
The 49ers became the first team to blow a lead twice in the fourth quarter and once in overtime of a Super Bowl. The 2019 season’s Super Bowl saw them unable to hold a 10-point fourth-quarter lead en route to a 31-20 defeat. Two seasons later, a similar cushion evaporated in the NFC Championship Game’s loss at Los Angeles.
This season’s defense produced no interceptions the final seven games and just two takeaways over the final nine games. Of the 49ers’ 17 total takeaways, only two came in the fourth quarter and both finished off wins – a Nick Bosa strip-sack fumble recovery in Week 4 against New England, and a Renardo Green interception Oct. 10 at Seattle.
Quarterback Brock Purdy got intercepted in the fourth quarter of his last three starts, and he had a trio of fourth-quarter interceptions earlier in the season.
“There’ve been moments I was more concerned and consumed with trying to be perfect,” Purdy said Dec. 19, “rather than, ‘Hey man, let’s go compete,’ and show my guys and my teammates I love this game, I’m passionate about it, and I can lead them in any situation.”
In fourth-quarter action all season, Purdy threw four touchdown passes, six interceptions and completed 69.5% of his passes (82-of-118) for 957 yards. Last year, en route to a franchise-record 4,280 passing yards, his fourth-quarter stats were 61-of-91, 938 yards, 10 touchdowns and three interceptions.
One mounting stat that’s followed Shanahan through his eight seasons: the 49ers are 0-43 when trailing by at least eight points in the fourth quarter
“I feel we should have been a playoff team, and then you never know what happens in there,” Shanahan said.
Added Lynch: “It’s terrible to sit home and watch something that you expect yourself to be in, the tournament. And we’re going to go about the work and we’re excited about the work to do just that. But I do believe we have finishers on this team and we’ve got to continue to add to that. We’ve got to continue to infuse youth and good football players to this team and we’ll do that.”