The 49ers are 4-0 after a 24-14 win over Denver, but the matchup that has been hanging over this team from the moment the schedule came out is back in full view. San Francisco spent the offseason trying to solve Seattle’s physical, man-heavy defense. Now, heading into Week 5, that plan looks badly damaged.
Seattle beat the Niners twice in January by leaning into a simple formula: pressure the front, play tight in press-match coverage, erase the middle of the field and force San Francisco to win on the outside. The 49ers responded by trying to reshape their offense around that problem. The 2026 version was supposed to feature Mike Evans, Ricky Pearsall and rookie De’Zhaun Stribling as perimeter answers, giving Brock Purdy cleaner man-beating options and opening the door for Kyle Shanahan to lean into gap-scheme runs and a more vertical passing game.
For a while, it looked like the approach was working. Even without Pearsall and then Stribling, no team had used less play action than the 49ers entering Week 4, and Purdy was playing at a level that drew a Dan Marino comparison. But the whole idea depended on having receivers who could win one-on-one.
Against Denver, that weakness showed up again.
Evans, playing through cracked ribs, a bad hip and a bad foot, fought through five contested catches. On eight targets, he produced just 1.95 yards of separation, and that number included three wide-open looks created by Shanahan.
He was clearly laboring throughout the game. With Pearsall still out and Stribling unavailable while recovering from his surgically repaired ankle, the 49ers are left without the kind of outside targets this offense was built around.
That matters even more because of the way Purdy sees the field. He has said he only sees downfield receivers cleanly about 40 percent of the time, and interior pressure makes everything harder.
When the pocket collapses, the windows disappear. That forces Purdy into scrambling, and while that helped against Denver, it came with a catch: the Broncos’ two elite cornerbacks were injured before San Francisco could really move the ball through the air.
Seattle is built to make that same problem hurt.
If the passing game is shaky, the run game was supposed to steady things. But Shanahan announced Monday that fullback Kyle Juszczyk will not play against Seattle after hyperextending his knee against Denver.
That is more than a depth issue. In this system, it changes the shape of the offense.
Juszczyk has been a major piece of the Niners’ run design since Shanahan started using dash motion against Atlanta in Week 7 of 2025. By flying across the formation at the snap, he forces defenses to adjust their gap counts and helps create space for Christian McCaffrey.
Brayden Willis is a capable player, but he is not Juszczyk. Jake Tonges had been the preferred backup fullback, but he is out for the season in Australia.
So the Niners may be walking into Seattle without the outside threats they need and without the fullback who helps power their run game. That is a problem, especially since the original plan for this season was built with the Seahawks in mind.
Still, Shanahan has made a career out of adapting when the first plan falls apart. The question now is whether San Francisco has the kind of fresh answer this matchup demands.
Brian Fleury, the former 49ers assistant who originally drew up dash motion, is now Seattle’s offensive coordinator. That leaves the obvious question in Santa Clara: who is generating the next wrinkle for this game?
Whoever it is, the work starts now. Going into Lumen Field with a battered receiver group, a patchwork fullback situation and the same concepts the 49ers spent the summer installing is inviting trouble.
San Francisco prepared for this game for months. By kickoff Sunday, we’ll know whether that preparation was enough.
In Other News...
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