49ers rookies a silver lining in Super Bowl loss

The big stage of Super Bowl 54 didn’t affect Nick Bosa and Deebo Samuel.

There were a pair of silver linings for the 49ers in their Super Bowl 54 loss to the Chiefs. One of them was wearing No. 97. The other was wearing No. 19.

San Francisco’s top two picks in the 2019 draft were consistently excellent throughout the biggest game of their lives, providing a lot of optimism on both sides of the ball for the 49ers moving into the future.

Bosa had a sack, five tackles, a forced fumble and a pass breakup, but he wreaked more havoc than those stats indicate. He was a regular presence in Kansas City’s backfield and made Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes uncomfortable throughout the contest.

Bosa recorded an absurd 12 quarterback pressures, which tied the single-game high for the 2019 season according to Pro Football Focus. His 90.1 PFF grade was his third-highest for the season. This was a large reason why a high-octane Chiefs offense had only 10 points late into the fourth quarter.

Samuel didn’t have as dominant of a game, but his value as a versatile, play-making weapon was apparent. He caught five balls for 39 yards on a team-high nine targets, and tacked on 53 rushing yards on three attempts. His 53 rushing yards were the most ever by a receiver in a Super Bowl.

San Francisco made a concerted effort to get Samuel the ball and the rookie answered the bell. The big-picture takeaway though is that the 49ers finally have a secondary playmaker on the perimeter to pair with George Kittle. They needed Samuel to thrive after Dante Pettis’ sudden decline in his second season, and Samuel turned in one of the best seasons ever by a 49ers rookie receiver, and capped it with a strong showing in the Super Bowl.

The 49ers needed to hit a home run with their top picks in the 2019 draft. Bosa and Samuel were both excellent through the regular season, and if they continue growing as players, they’ll help San Francisco get back to the Super Bowl sooner than later.

Travis Kelce found an incredible way to chug a beer off the Lombardi Trophy

Travis Kelce is a creative genius.

Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs are on top of the world after winning the Super Bowl in dramatic fashion on Sunday night. It’s the first Super Bowl for the franchise in 50 years, which means the partying is going to be some next-level stuff for both the players and the fans of the team.

Kelce, who scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter in Super Bowl 54, shared on Instagram that he grew up playing hockey and one day dreamed of drinking out of the Stanley Cup.

Well, he’s a football player and the Lombardi Trophy doesn’t have a cup on it, so drinking out of it isn’t a possibility, right?

Wrong.

Check out what Kelce did on the flight home:

Yup, that is incredible.

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The Richard Sherman backlash after Super Bowl 54 is just more proof of his greatness

If that was a “bad” performance for Richard Sherman, then the standard is ridiculously high.

Super Bowl 54 probably didn’t go the way Richard Sherman envisioned it would. The 49ers cornerback didn’t make much of an impact, and after he gave up a 38-yard reception to Sammy Watkins, NFL Twitter unloaded on the trash-talking defensive back.

The numbers did not look great for Sherman. According to Pro Football Focus, the veteran corner was targeted five times and gave up five completions for 72 yards. Both were season highs. But those numbers are a bit misleading and the heat Sherman caught following the game just goes to show how high the standard is for one of the greatest cornerbacks in NFL history.

Let’s take a look at all five of those targets. You can watch all of them here before we look at them individually.

Let’s start with Watkins’ big catch, which was certainly a play that Sherman would like back…

It appears the Chiefs were running a quick passing concept, but with Sherman in press coverage, Watkins converts his route to a fade. Sherman is really done in by the alignment.

With Watkins aligning in a tight split, Sherman is like expecting an out-breaking route. The thinking behind that is the receiver is aligning further inside to give himself space to run back outside. Watkins feints outside and gets Sherman to bite before working back inside and that provides him the step he needed to beat the 49ers star downfield.

Here’s the second big play Sherman “gave up.” It comes on a scramble drill where he has to cover Watkins for about five seconds.

No coach is expecting his corner to hold up in coverage that long. This play ultimately falls on the pass rush for not being able to contain Mahomes.

The remaining three targets let to minimal gains. Tyreek Hill’s two catches on Sherman came on short routes vs. soft zone coverage.

Hill catches the ball in the area of the field that coaches literally refer to as the “no cover zone,” so dinging Sherman for the catches makes no sense. On the first play, Hill does make Sherman look silly with a nice juke, but that has nothing to do with his coverage.

And here’s the final target, which is actually a really nice play by Sherman on Kelce, as he brought down the best tight end in the NFL for little yardage. Kelce is one of the best yard-after-catch players in the league, so that’s no small feat.

Sherman was really only beat once in coverage. Just once! Every corner gets beat. Stefon Gilmore gets beat. Jalen Ramsey gets beat. Darrelle Revis got beat.

That didn’t stop Twitter from piling on Sherman. If the standard is THAT high for him, then maybe Sherman is right: He really is the best corner in the game.

Mic’d-up video captures Tyrann Mathieu’s incredible pregame Super Bowl speech

“We need to be remembered.”

Tyrann Mathieu was one of the more impactful additions to the Chiefs defense heading into this season. Obviously, Mathieu’s versatility on the field as a do-it-all defensive star was key, but the Honey Badger also brought an invaluable leadership presence to the Kansas City defense.

That was on display during the Chiefs’ Super Bowl 54 win over the 49ers.

One of the game’s turning points was when a frustrated Mathieu could be seen on the sideline trying to fire up his teammates. Before the game, though, Mathieu had his defense ready to go with an awesome pregame speech.

NFL Films captured the mic’d-up video and posted it to Twitter.

Mathieu said:

“Hey, dog! Hey, this is why we here, dog. This why we here. You remember that (expletive) stretch we had in September, October? We knew what kind of team we was, dog. All we had to do was believe in each other and play for each other. I watched a lot of y’all drop y’all pride this year, dog. I watched a lot of people step up, dog. Big time players! That’s what we need today. We need energy. We need oneness, dog. We need to be remembered. Let’s go! Let’s go! Hey, champions on 3.”

Yeah, I’m ready to play a football game myself now. That was great. And hey, the speech worked.

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49ers’ biggest concern for the 2020 offseason is developing Jimmy Garoppolo

With limited draft picks and salary cap, Henry McKenna thinks the 49ers need to focus on developing Jimmy Garoppolo this offseason.

With limited draft picks and salary cap, Henry McKenna thinks the 49ers need to focus on developing Jimmy Garoppolo this offseason.

Why the 49ers need to think about trading Jimmy Garoppolo

The 49ers’ Super Bowl window is closing rapidly and flipping the QB for draft picks is the only remedy.

The 49ers’ heartbreaking loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl 54 has fractured San Francisco’s fanbase into two groups: One believes that Jimmy Garoppolo, who has started only 26 games during his career, is still inexperienced and just needs time to develop into the franchise quarterback they needed him to be against the Chiefs on Sunday night in Miami.

And then there are the realistic 49ers fans. The fans who see a 28-year-old quarterback who has been in this league for the better part of a decade now and is already two years into a contract that made him the highest-paid player in NFL history at one point in time. They also realize how short Super Bowl windows are — especially when that window is, in part, propped open by a dominant defense. There isn’t time to wait and see on Garoppolo. Windows open and close in an instant in the NFL. Just ask the Jaguars, Bears and Rams. Three teams that thought they had time to let their young quarterbacks figure it out … until they didn’t.

The 49ers should be a good team in 2020. Kyle Shanahan will still be cooking up the offensive game plans and calling the plays. It’s irrational to expect the defense to perform at the same level it did in 2019 (that doesn’t tend to happen with historically good defenses), but it will be good, at the very least. But simply “running it back” and hoping for a different ending will not go so well. The 49ers have to get better, and it’s going to be hard for them to do with their offseason resources.

(You’ll find the 49ers all the way on the left, toward the bottom … where no team wants to be on this graph.)

As a result of the trades for Dee Ford and Emmanuel Sanders, the 49ers do not have a pick in the second, third or fourth rounds of the 2020 NFL draft. They also have less than $20 million cap space, while several key players are headed for free agency, including Sanders, DE Arik Armstead and FS Jimmie Ward. The team will also have to give raises to exclusive rights free agent CB Emmanuel Moseley and do-it-all FB Kyle Juszczyk, if the 49ers pick up his club option for 2020. LT Joe Staley said before the playoffs that he isn’t thinking about retirement but it appears to be a distinct possibility the team will have to plan for. On paper, the 49ers were arguably the deepest team in the league but that will not be the case next season. They’ll have to let some of those free agents walk and do not have the draft capital or cap space to replace them

But there is one way to get more of both: Trade Jimmy G.

It would be a radical move, for sure — and one that a lot of 49ers fans would take issue with — but the team could save $22.4 million in cap space by moving on from the 28-year-old while also bringing back some much-needed draft capital.

NFL teams have typically balked at moving on from a competent QB even if it’s clear he’s not The One. Mostly because there usually isn’t an obvious replacement available via free agency or trade. But that’s not the case this offseason when there should be several viable replacements available, including Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, Jameis Winston and Teddy Bridgewater, to name a few. And it’s not like we haven’t seen Kyle Shanahan cobble together productive passing games with underwhelming talent at the quarterback position. Just last year, his offense allowed undrafted free agent Nick Mullens to average 0.13 Expected Points Added per dropback. Garoppolo averaged 0.19 this season … with a much better supporting cast and against an easier schedule, per Football Outsiders. San Francisco should not be afraid to re-enter the quarterback wild.

It’s really the only hope. If the rest of the 49ers roster is going to be worse off (and that’s looking like a certainty barring some offseason wizardry from GM John Lynch) an upgrade at quarterback is a must if this team is going to make it back to the Super Bowl.

The only resource they really have to make that upgrade is Jimmy G himself. There is just enough shine left on him — even after an underwhelming performance in the Super Bowl — to dupe some poor team into trading for a 28-year-old vet who still can’t get to his second read or throw consistently outside the numbers. The 49ers don’t have to dip their toes into the free-agent waters or draft a developmental QB prospect. They can just give Carolina a call and enquire about Cam Newton, whose future with the Panthers is still up in the air.

Newton would be a perfect cog in Shanahan’s offensive machine. The 49ers run game was already among the best in the league; now imagine throwing a run threat at quarterback in the mix. Opposing defenses haven’t stood much of a chance playing 11-on-10 in the run. Playing 11-on-11 against a Shanahan offense would be brutal, as we saw during the 2012 season when he was working with a rookie Robert Griffin III. Newton is also an underrated pocket passer who will allow Shanahan to call more dropback passes instead of relying on the tricks he used to make Garoppolo functional: play-action fakes and passes no further than five yards past the line of scrimmage. His menu of play calls would expand tenfold — and it’s already pretty robust as things stand.

Even if it’s not Newton, the 49ers need some change at the position, which should have been made clear after their postseason run. Shanahan made things so easy on Garoppolo during the playoffs, and he still couldn’t hold up his end. He threw the ball only 58 times over the course of three games and his passes traveled 7.6 yards downfield on average. Yet, Garoppolo still managed to throw interceptions on 5.2% of his throws. How bad is that? Well, Jameis Winston threw interceptions on 4.8% of his passes during the regular season and his average pass traveled 10.5 yards downfield. And it’s not like Garoppolo putting the ball in harm’s way was some new development. He threw 13 interceptions during the regular season and had another eight dropped by defenders. There’s a reason why Shanahan doesn’t ask him to do too much thinking.

The hope is that Garoppolo improves and eventually develops into a quarterback who no longer needs schematic training wheels to produce at the level he did this season. But I just don’t know how that happens if Shanahan is forced to keep those training wheels on for the sake of the team. The 49ers roster is built to win now, not to be in “develop a quarterback who is already 28 and gets paid like a top-tier passer” mode. “Practice” isn’t any better of an answer; Garoppolo has been practicing for six years now and still needs half-field reads to be comfortable in the pocket. The best-case scenario — or at least the most realistic one — is Jimmy G following the same developmental track as Kirk Cousins, where he incrementally gets better but never quite fully figures out the issues that make him a liability in the first place. I don’t think “Maybe one day he’ll turn into Kirk Cousins” is something any NFL fan should be hoping for.

Whatever the 49ers end up doing, moving on from Garoppolo has to be taken into consideration. The front office wisely gave itself an out when putting together his contract; it was essentially a front-loaded two-year deal with a team option. Most of the guaranteed money was paid out early (his salary cap number was $37 million in year one but is closer to $27 for the remaining three years). San Francisco will owe only $4.2 million in dead cap if it moves on now, and it has time to make that decision: $15.7 million of Garoppolo’s 2020 salary becomes guaranteed on April 1, well after free agency has begun.

Will they be smart enough to bail or will they continue down this path to nowhere? The 49ers defense isn’t going to get any better. And neither will the team if the quarterback situation doesn’t change sooner rather than later.

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Josh Allen wished he was playing, not at awards show, over weekend

Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen is ready to return to the field after taking in the festivities of Super Bowl week.

Among the attendees at the NFL Honors this past weekend was Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.

While excited for the event, Allen still kept the big picture in mind. At that point, there was still one game to go, Super Bowl LIV. The Chiefs went on to beat the 49ers in the season’s final game.

In that moment, Allen wished much more that he was prepping for that game instead of hanging out at some awards show.

“This is crazy, I feel like a movie star, don’t like it. I want to play football,” Allen said via 13WHAM-TV. “I’d rather be preparing for a game than walking down this carpet.”

“It does put things into perspective how close we were this season,” Allen added.

But while taking in the event, Allen knew he had some sort of rooting interests at the NFL Honors.

Head coach Sean McDermott was a finalist for Coach of the Year. While certainly biased, Allen was pulling for McDermott, who ended up receiving two votes for the award.

“We follow his [McDermott’s] lead. He comes in, all of our team meetings…his example that is set forth and the examples of stuff in the game and teaching us situational football. He’s been fantastic for us,” Allen said.

With the Super Bowl in the books, the 2019 season has officially come to a close. Look for Allen and his teammate to make strides to continue their development and success throughout the offseason.

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Post Super Bowl mock draft: Ravens grab ball-hawking safety

The league turns their attention to the offseason after the Super Bowl and I’ve got the Ravens grabbing impact players in the 2020 NFL draft

The 2019 NFL season is officially over after the Kansas City Chiefs won Super Bowl 54. With the full 2020 NFL draft order figured out and every team staring the offseason in the eyes, it’s the perfect time for another mock draft.

I went with The Draft Network’s mock draft simulator and used their predictive board to create this two-round mock draft for the Baltimore Ravens. It gave me some new options that I think Baltimore would be excited to call at the podium come draft day.

Let’s take a look at the two players I selected in the 2020 NFL draft for the Ravens.

Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images

First round (No. 28) – S Grant Delpit, LSU

While I would have loved a pass rusher here, there was no good values this late in the first round. The Ravens never really reach for a prospect that fits a bigger need and have quite famously gone with their draft board, especially in the first round. They’ve taken guys like cornerback Marlon Humphrey even though they’ve seemingly had enough depth there at the time. Picking up Delpit is the same type of move in my book and one that will pay of in short order.

Baltimore might be set at safety currently but Chuck Clark is set to hit free agency next offseason and who knows how many good years Earl Thomas has left in him. Delpit would give the Ravens a ball-hawking safety (eight interceptions over three years) with tons of heart that can also play inside the box against the run (199 combined tackles over three years).

Delpit would get a great education under Thomas and Clark, potentially being ready for a starting role as early as 2021 if Baltimore wants to move on from either player.

It’s still hard to believe that Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers let THAT happen to them

What happens to the 49ers now?

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Kyle Shanahan spoke confidently all last week about everything thing he learned from his first Super Bowl experience when he was the offensive coordinator of an Atlanta Falcons team that blew a 28-3 lead before losing to the Patriots in historic fashion.

The 49ers coach ran from nothing during the buildup to Super Bowl 54 last week in Miami. He talked about what he learned a lot from that loss, how he had many positive memories from that season, and how that whole experience only made him a stronger person.

I sat there in those press conferences in downtown Miami last week and believed him, too. Shanahan is this offensive mastermind who was ready to put the past behind him for good and make an incredibly loud statement with a his new group of players who were coming off a torching of the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game.

For three and a half quarters on Sunday night it felt like Shanahan was right – that night with the Falcons had changed him. His 49ers held a 10-point lead over the Chiefs midway through the fourth quarter, they had found a way to make Patrick Mahomes look incredibly human all game long, and all they had to do was hold on and the Lombardy Trophy would be theirs.

Instead, though, they coughed up 21 straight points to the Chiefs and somehow lost a game that should have been theirs. Sure, the Chiefs went out there and WON the game… but the 49ers could have – and should have – held on to win in Miami. And yes, the refs could have made some calls go the other way, but things happen and you have to deal with it.

Shanahan now has to deal with being outscored a combined 46-0 in the fourth quarter and OT in his two Super Bowl trips as the OC and now the head coach of the 49ers. If the first loss didn’t leave a bad stink on his shoulders, this second one should, and you have to wonder what that will mean for the 49ers going forward.

Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo’s skills are now being questioned by just about everyone who watched the Super Bowl, as his ability to close the game on Sunday was severely lacking. Some are wondering if they can get away from the franchise QB in the next few years, which is shocking because of how much money they threw his way and how much he seemed like a franchise quarterback just a few weeks ago.

Losing Super Bowls in devastating fashion can lead to even more devastation  in years to come. Just look at the Falcons – they still haven’t recovered from that loss to the Patriots.

The 49ers are fortunate to have an incredible defense that just couldn’t stop Mahomes from being Mahomes down the stretch, which has happened to a lot of teams this year.

But now you have to wonder what this loss will do to a team that went from 4-12 last year to 13-3 this year. Will it be crushing and lead them back to their losing ways of last season or is this something they will be able to shake off and remain contenders next year.

Right now, it seems like your guess is as good as mine when it comes to the future of the 49ers.

Shanahan seemed to have the world all figured out just a few days ago. Now it has been turned upside down again and there’s no real telling just how easy it will be to straighten things up.

All because they just couldn’t close out a Super Bowl that was theirs to win, which was shocking.

Again.

Monday’s biggest winner: Derrick Nnadi.

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The Chiefs defensive tackle is celebrating the team’s Super Bowl victory by helping over 100 rescue dogs at a local shelter in Kansas City. Nnadi got his own rescue dog a few years ago in college and fell in love, with is easy to do if you’ve ever rescued a pup. Now he’s helping more people and dogs feel the same way, which is awesome.

Quick hits: Chiefs fans set off all the fireworks… Chiefs radio calls were so good… Damien Williams’ classy moment… And more!

– Chiefs fans set off so many fireworks Sunday night that they showed up on radar. For real.

– You need to hear the radio calls of the Chiefs winning their first Super Bowl in 50 years.

– This classy moment in the tunnel right after the Super Bowl was easily my favorite moment of the Super Bowl.

– Chiefs fans are roasting Troy Aikman over an old tweet about Mahomes.

– LeSean McCoy’s son wasn’t all that impressed with Paul Rudd.

– LeBron James explained why his All-Star team will be wearing the No. 2.

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49ers’ Super Bowl LIV loss was bad, but not the end of the road

The 49ers are in a good spot despite their bad loss to the Chiefs in the 2020 Super Bowl.

Not a lot of things went right for the 49ers as they blew a 10-point fourth quarter lead to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV.

A loss of that nature brought out some intensely negative knee-jerk reactions and a slew of terrible takes on the internet. While the loss undoubtedly stings, there’s some things to keep in mind heading into the 2020 offseason.

One overarching theme of the post-Super Bowl takes has been the attempted blame of one person. It was not Jimmy Garoppolo’s fault. Nor was it Kyle Shanahan’s, or Robert Saleh’s, or any single person. There were mistakes on all levels.

Garoppolo was not sharp in the fourth quarter. Shanahan probably has a few play calls he’d like back. San Francisco’s secondary had a couple of significant coverage breakdowns late. All of those things can be true without absolving anyone of blame just to throw it on one person. The need to have a solitary scapegoat makes sense, but in this case, a series of mistakes led to the 49ers’ ultimate demise.

What Sunday came down to was one team making plays while the other did not. That’s how football goes sometimes. Patrick Mahomes completed a 44-yard bomb on third-and-15, just getting his throw off before a big hit from DeForest Buckner. Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones knocked down multiple Garoppolo passes late when Garoppolo had open receivers. Garoppolo also missed an open Emmanuel Sanders on a deep shot that would’ve given the 49ers the lead with just under a minute left.

There were also some smaller plays like key tackles and good coverage down the field that helped spark the Chiefs’ comeback to stifle the 49ers’ offense.

All the scheming and game-planning in the world doesn’t matter if one player simply beats another, and Kansas City made plays. Digging deeper will divulge details of those plays, but the Chiefs did what the 49ers couldn’t in the fourth quarter. That’s how football goes sometimes. It just went that way for San Francisco in the worst moment.

San Francisco is also in a good spot to be in contention for a few years. Expecting a window larger than a handful of years is probably unrealistic in the modern NFL and with the 49ers’ current salary cap situation. While going to back-to-back Super Bowls is difficult, the 49ers can easily be in the conversation if they keep this team largely intact.

This isn’t the point where the team should make any dramatic decisions like firing Shanahan or Saleh, or moving on from Garoppolo.

It’s worth considering, while Garoppolo was not good in key moments Sunday, this was still his first full season as a starter. The 28-year-old now has 29 starts under his belt including the postseason.

His regular season was good, but his playoff performance left a lot to be desired. There’s still growth for him in the offense though where he doesn’t miss open receivers the way he did in the Super Bowl.

The 2019 season didn’t end the way San Francisco wanted it to, but Sunday wasn’t the end of the road for them. They’re still in a position to take steps forward despite the heartbreak in Super Bowl LIV, and if things go right, they’ll be back to avenge the loss sooner rather than later.