SANTA CLARA -- Brock Purdy didn’t just run the 49ers’ offense in their 35-13 win over the Miami Dolphins. He was the offense.
Purdy finished 20 of 22 for 287 yards and two touchdowns through the air, added a rushing score, and led the team on the ground with 30 yards. He did it without much help from the run game and without De'Zhaun Stribling, Ricky Pearsall or Demarcus Robinson, who left in the first half with an ankle injury. Through two games, Purdy looks like a quarterback who has taken a real step forward from last season, and he’s squarely in the MVP conversation.
The passing game opened things up in a hurry once George Kittle got involved. Kittle didn’t see a target in the first half, which made sense with the 49ers having only two drives before halftime.
Once the second half began, though, Purdy hit him for a 40-yard gain right down the middle, and Kittle finished with four catches for 80 yards and a touchdown. He looked far more like himself than he did last week, when he was clearly rusty, and once he got rolling the Dolphins had no answer for the aerial attack.
Kyle Juszczyk added a touchdown catch, and Christian McCaffrey scored twice on the ground, but the run game still didn’t look right. McCaffrey averaged just 2.3 yards per carry and looked more like the back from the past two seasons than the one who flashed last week against the Rams.
That raises the obvious question of whether his strong opener had more to do with the Rams being unprepared than anything else. Even with Juszczyk in motion almost every snap, the ground game suddenly feels like an issue again.
The good news for San Francisco is simple: Purdy is carrying a lot of that load.
The injury picture got messy, too. Mike Evans had three catches for 54 yards before leaving in the fourth quarter with a hip injury that didn’t appear serious, since he stayed on the sideline and watched the rest of the game.
Demarcus Robinson had three catches for 34 yards before going out with a high-ankle sprain, and that was the worst injury concern of the day for the 49ers. Deebo Samuel replaced him in the starting lineup and caught three passes for 31 yards while dropping one throw.
He’s healthy enough, but he’s not the same player he was three years ago. He’s slower.
Up front, the offensive line gave Purdy clean protection, as the 49ers allowed zero sacks. But the run blocking was another story.
If you remove Purdy’s three scrambles, which count as pass plays on the sheet, the 49ers averaged only 2.4 yards per carry. That points straight at an offensive line that still looks like the weakest part of the offense.
Last week’s run-game success now looks like the outlier, not the rule.
Defensively, the 49ers were better in the pass rush than they were a week ago, finishing with two sacks after having none last week. Fred Warner was a force, blitzing often and getting credit for half a sack.
He was excellent against the pass, along with the rest of the defense. But the run defense was a different story.
The 49ers gave up 84 rushing yards in the first half alone, while the game was still competitive, and that came against a Miami offense that didn’t have much going for it beyond Devon Achane. Achane still produced 93 yards from scrimmage.
Warner said after the game that the defense is still sorting out assignments and run fits in Raheem Morris’ system. They’re going to need to sort it out fast.
The 49ers also lost defensive tackle James Thompson Jr. to a high-ankle sprain, and that matters because he’s the third defensive lineman, along with Alfred Collins and Sam Okuayinonu, to suffer a serious injury in the last two weeks. The defensive tackle spot looks like the clearest weakness on the entire defense, and the 49ers need to add help there immediately.
There were some encouraging individual moments in the secondary. The 49ers limited Malik Willis to 197 passing yards, and 77 of those came on one long touchdown in garbage time. Upton Stout gave that one up and has to cover better, but he also flashed with half a sack and a pass breakup, so it was not a bad day overall.
Eddy Pineiro barely had to do anything while playing through a cold, and that was enough to earn a little admiration on its own.
Raheem Morris put together another solid outing, though not quite at the level he had last week against the Rams, a team he knows well. This time, he was dealing with a Dolphins team that really only had one dangerous playmaker in Devon Achane, and even that challenge proved difficult.
Morris leaned on five-man fronts to try to stop the run, but it didn’t really work. Still, he’s doing that without an NFL-caliber nose tackle.
On the other side, Kyle Shanahan kept the offense humming for the second straight week. He managed the game cleanly, kept the pressure on Miami, and when the 49ers were up 29 in the fourth quarter, he actually pulled his starters instead of chasing more stats.
That’s not always been his style. Maybe it’s a sign he’s changing.
If it is, the 49ers might have a real shot at something bigger this season.
In Other News...
49ers WR Injuries Could Force A Trade For Former First Rounder
Early-season injuries have already thinned out the 49ers receiver room, and that kind of problem tends to get attention fast in Santa Clara. When the depth chart starts wobbling at wideout, the conversation usually turns from short-term patch jobs to bigger swings, especially for a team that expects to stay in the playoff hunt and cant afford to let a promising start get bogged down by attrition.
One name now floating into that discussion is Jerry Jeudy, with Bleacher Reports Moe Moton pointing to the Browns as a possible trade partner. Clevelands new coaching staff is leaning into younger players, and Jeudys role and production have both faded enough to make a deal conceivable if the price is right. For San Francisco, it is the sort of move that makes sense on paper, even if the real question is whether the 49ers feel pressure to act before the market gets thinner. [Read more 🡒]
Brock Purdy Led A 49ers Rout But The Grades Get More Interesting
Brock Purdys sharp afternoon in the 49ers 35-13 win over the Dolphins carried over into the numbers game, too. Pro Football Focus handed him the highest overall offensive grade in the NFL for Week 2 after he completed 20 of 22 passes for 287 yards, threw two touchdowns and added a rushing score, all while San Franciscos line kept him clean and did not allow a sack.
The grading also painted a fuller picture of how the offense functioned around him, with George Kittle standing out in the receiving evaluation and Kyle Juszczyk earning his usual value in the mix. Not every name landed as high, though, and the split in the grades makes the review of this rout a little more interesting for a 49ers team that looked dominant on the scoreboard but still gave PFF plenty to sort through. [Read more 🡒]
49ers Fan Captured The NFL Streaming Frustration Everyone Feels
At Levis Stadium during the 49ers home opener, one fan managed to turn a handmade sign into a small but sharp snapshot of a bigger problem around the NFLs modern viewing experience. The message spoke to what has become an increasingly familiar annoyance for fans trying to follow games online, where access is split across multiple platforms instead of sitting in one place.
Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, Paramount+ and Netflix have all become part of the leagues fragmented streaming landscape, and each one comes with its own subscription hurdle. The sign struck a chord because it reflected a frustration many viewers know well, the sense that watching football digitally now requires more juggling, more spending and a lot more patience than it used to. [Read more 🡒]