1. I know Davis Mills has looked good lately and is more athletic than he looks and that Rex Burkhead is coming off the game of his life, but a speed option with that duo is suspect.
Hell, that would even be suspect in early 2000’s EA Sports NCAA Football on PS2. My apologies if I’m dating myself.
2. Rookie QB Trey Lance might need a few sliding lessons. If he plays like he did early on Sunday and takes the hits he did his career isn’t going to be that long.
3. Is Lance nine months away from being ready to be a quality NFL starter? Especially considering San Francisco traded the house for him. It seems like when you trade that much to get a guy he’d be ready to play immediately, but when you watch him play it’s clear he isn’t.
4. The 49ers would’ve been better off holding it down with Jimmy Garoppolo in 2021 and then seeing if they could get in on Deshaun Watson, Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers or someone else in the 2021 offseason.
5. The first half effort of Lovie Smith’s defense has been valiant the overwhelming majority of the season. I want to re-emphasize how wrong I was about the hire of Smith as DC.
6. The forward progress being stopped call after Chris Conley and Brevin Jordan stripped the ball following a Davis Mills third quarter interception was a bad call.
Sometimes the officials just make it up as they go.
7. That Lance throw, like most of his passes Sunday, was borderline uncatchable on the PI the play after that phantom forward progress call.
8. Kyle Shanahan will scheme guys open and make Lance’s life easier, but the young man has a long way to go, it appears.
9. Ka’imi Fairbairn is the third highest-paid kicker in the NFL and has missed seven kicks this season. Safe to say he wasn’t worth the Justin Tucker-like money that King Bill O’Brien and company gave him.
10. After not stinking as bad as he did last year, this was also a bad game for Eric Murray, another BOB and Easterby move from the 2020 offseason.
11. My belief the last 20 months that you can bring in anyone off the street and they can play running back better than David Johnson is confirmed every time I watch another running back off the street, or in any other game, play football. Royce Freeman is the latest.
12. The game was a prototypical blah game. One more to go. Then the fun begins.