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The #49ers blew out the Cardinals and they’re back atop the NFC West. Some thoughts!
The 49ers needed to put their stamp on a game. They’d reached the 5-4 mark with a couple of nice wins, but a blowout win would help establish them as a real threat in the NFC. They got that blowout victory Monday night in Mexico City when they thumped the Cardinals 38-10 on national TV.
Here are our thoughts and notes from a laugher in south of the border:
Brandon Aiyuk again in Mexico City. 2 catches, 2 touchdowns, and the #49ers are up 31-10.
So nice he did it twice! @THE2ERA
📺 : #SFvsAZ on ESPN
📱: Stream on NFL+ pic.twitter.com/KBr8pr9CVL— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) November 22, 2022
The volume wasn’t there for Brandon Aiyuk on Monday night, but he still managed to score twice. His fourth target of the game came late in the third quarter. He hauled it in for a 13-yard touchdown. It was his second catch and his second touchdown. He got the 49ers on the board with a seven-yard score in the second quarter as well. Jimmy Garoppolo after that TD was 18-for-27 for 189 yards and three touchdowns.
WATCH: Dee. Bo.
Run that back, Deebo! @19problemz
📺 : #SFvsAZ on ESPN
📱: Stream on NFL+ pic.twitter.com/tJ4LE3Y3DP— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) November 22, 2022
The 49ers ran it seven times in the first half Monday night. They ran it seven times on their first drive of the second half. Their eight-play, 75-yard drive was capped by a 39-yard rushing score by Deebo Samuel. It was his second and longest TD run of the season.
The San Francisco 49ers will meet the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night Football from Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico.
The San Francisco 49ers will meet the Arizona Cardinals on Monday Night Football from Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, Mexico.
The 49ers are coming off two straight wins after knocking off the Chargers and Rams to improve to 5-4 on the season. Meanwhile, the Cardinals are coming into tonight’s game with a 4-6 record after knocking off the Rams last week as they look to Colt McCoy to lead them to another victory tonight in Mexico.
This will be a great night of NFL action, here is everything you need to know to watch and stream the game on Monday night.
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San Francisco 49ers (-10) vs. Arizona Cardinals
Over/Under: 43
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We caught up with Cards Wire’s Jess Root (@senorroot) to chat about a strange Cardinals season leading up to Monday night’s showdown in Mexico City.
The 49ers and Cardinals played twice in the first nine weeks last season. This year they won’t meet until Week 11 on Monday Night Football.
Both clubs have put together up-and-down years to this point, but it’s San Francisco that enters the game with a 5-4 record, 1.5 games ahead of the 4-6 Cardinals. It’s a chance for the 49ers to put a nail in a division rival’s coffin, and a chance for the Cardinals to kick the door in on the playoff picture.
So, just how good are the Cardinals this year? We got in touch with the Cards Wire’s Jess Root to get a lay of the land in the desert (lots of cacti FYI) ahead of Monday nights’s showdown in Mexico City.
Why didn’t the #49ers just practice in Mexico City?
The 49ers spent their week of practice in Colorado Springs with the hopes of getting their players acclimated to the more than 7,000 feet of elevation they’ll play in Monday night at Estadio Azetca in Mexico City.
While there’s no tried and true method for bodily acclimation to the thinner air at elevation, head coach Kyle Shanahan said the team is standing by their choice to spend the week preparing at nearly 6,000 feet above sea level in Colorado Springs.
“That’s what science says and we had our biggest practice on Thursday, I think that’s where they really felt it,” Shanahan said. “Wednesday’s not quite as much and today’s not quite as much, but Thursday, which was Friday to the rest of the world, they really felt it then. And that was the first time they’re like, oh this, this is pretty real.”
So why didn’t the team just head directly to Mexico City? Shanahan explained that the accommodations at the Air Force Academy where they practiced gave them everything they needed.
“I heard Air Force has really good facilities,” Shanahan said. “I heard they had everything that could accommodate us. I talked to New England coaches and Chargers coaches and they said that. We flew our guys down here to check all of that. They thought it was pretty nice. I’ve been here, I think it’s pretty nice. I didn’t have the same connections in Mexico City. [OL] Alfredo [Gutierrez] didn’t know the people, so it’s hard to trust.”
Whether practicing in the elevated climate is actually beneficial isn’t necessarily known, so it makes sense that they’d at least make sure they went somewhere where they knew the facilities would be adequate for what they needed to prepare.
In the later portions of Monday night’s game we’ll see whether the week at altitude actually helped the 49ers. If they fall apart late, it could be a sign that going anywhere at elevation wasn’t necessarily the right move.
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Some good #49ers news? It appears Brandon Aiyuk is back.
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There wasn’t much good to pull from the 49ers’ Week 9 loss to the Cardinals. It was, in all ways, an abysmal defeat. One thing that stood out Sunday as a plus for San Francisco was the emergence of wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk for the second consecutive week.
Aiyuk, a week after earning seven targets in Chicago, tied for the team lead with eight targets against the Cardinals. It appeared there was a concerted effort to get the ball in his hands after six weeks of active avoidance of the second-year receiver by 49ers quarterbacks. He finished Sunday’s game with six catches for 89 yards and a touchdown on a season-high eight targets.
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In Weeks 1-7, Aiyuk was targeted 16 times. He notched 9 receptions for 96 yards and a touchdown. He was on a 17-game pace of 45 targets, 26 catches, 272 yards and three touchdowns.
In the last two games his numbers skyrocketed to 15 targets, 10 receptions, 134 yards and a touchdown. That’s a 17-game pace of 128 targets, 85 catches, 1,139 yards and nine touchdowns.
This is the player the 49ers have needed since Week 1, and the player they’ll need for the rest of the year if they’re going to keep their increasingly faint playoff hopes alive.
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The #49ers playoff hopes have faded to almost nothing after their abysmal loss to the Cardinals.
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The 49ers’ season didn’t officially end Sunday when the clock hit 0:00 of their 31-17 loss to Colt McCoy and the Arizona Cardinals at Levi’s Stadium. Unofficially we can set them out of the playoff chase until a dramatic turnaround gives reason to do so.
San Francisco on Sunday against the Cardinals needed a win. They had a chance to get to 4-4 and ride a two-game win streak into a Monday Night Football matchup with the Los Angeles Rams. Instead, they came out flat against Arizona, coughed up two early turnovers and fell behind 17-0 midway through the second quarter.
They battled back to cut it to 17-7 before halftime, but Arizona scored the next 14 points and jumped out to an insurmountable 31-7 third-quarter lead.
Now the 49ers are 3-5 and face the red-hot Los Angeles Rams, arguably the best team in football, in Week 10. The path to the playoffs, until the 49ers prove they can consistently play well on both sides of the ball, is closed.
Sure, they could win against the Rams and then go on the road to knock off Jacksonville and get to 5-5, but reality in the immediate aftermath of a dismal loss to Arizona is that beating the Rams seems impossible. Knocking off the Jaguars seems like a 50-50 proposition. The rest of their schedule doesn’t teem with easy wins or games that can be chalked up as Ws.
Week 8 in Chicago made it seem like the 49ers might put together a nice little run. Week 9 dropped them right back down to Earth. Consistency is key, and San Francisco just hasn’t had it. They are not good enough.
Solutions to their problems don’t come down to one player, or one coach, but it’s clear what they’re doing now isn’t working. Losing that game to the Cardinals was inexcusable, and now we may be in for a long wait until the 49ers put together another “good” win.
Week 9 was San Francisco’s chance to turn their season around and they responded with a lackluster performance indicative of a team looking forward to the offseason with nine games remaining on the schedule. That’s not a good place to be, but that’s where they’re at, and that is not going to get them into the postseason.
The #49ers are at a new low. Observations from each quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Cardinals.
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The 49ers are at a new all-time low after getting pushed around by a Colt McCoy-led Cardinals team at Levi’s Stadium. They fell 31-17 and dropped to 3-5 on the season.
It was ugly from the jump. Here are our observations from each quarter:
