The 49ers shouldn’t throw themselves a parade just yet.
Sure, they blew out Arizona on Sunday, and their offense looked terrific with Brock Purdy, George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey and Ricky Pearsall and Jauan Jennings all on the field together.
But they faced a Cardinals team that committed 17 penalties, and got blown out last week, and has lost seven of its past eight games, and is playing a bunch of backups on offense and defense, and probably will fire its head coach at the end of the season if not sooner. So the win doesn’t necessarily project how far the 49ers will go this season.
And when you go back and examine how the 49ers beat the Cardinals, you discover a disturbing fact — the offense played well, but the defense wasn’t good.
To be fair, the defense forced three turnovers, and that’s impressive. But, it also never sacked Cardinals backup quarterback Jacoby Brissett even though he dropped back to pass a whopping 57 times. That’s a big reason why he threw for 452 yards and completed an NFL record 47 passes while playing with Trey McBride, Michael Wilson, Greg Dortch and Zonovan Knight.
Keep in mind, the Cardinals outgunned the 49ers by 207 yards and still lost because they essentially beat themselves by committing 17 penalties and 3 turnovers. They’re bad for a reason. But the 49ers’ next opponent, the Carolina Panthers, won’t necessarily let the 49ers defense off the hook.
Panthers quarterback Bryce Young was the No. 1 pick in the draft just a few seasons ago. On Sunday, he threw for 448 yards, 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions against the Atlanta Falcons, who have a good pass rush. As opposed to the 49ers, who have no pass rush after losing Nick Bosa for the season and choosing not to trade a second- or third-round pick at the trade deadline to complement Bryce Huff.
If the 49ers had Huff and Jaelan Phillips or Jermaine Johnson, they might be legitimate Super Bowl contenders, because any team that can put up 40 and rush the quarterback has a shot, especially in this era of extreme parity.
But as long as immobile backups such as Brissett can drop back nearly 60 times without getting sacked, the 49ers will have trouble stringing together wins. Remember, they haven’t had a winning streak since they started the season 3-0. And they haven’t beaten a team with a winning record since Mac Jones took down the Rams in Los Angeles in Week 5.
Meanwhile, the Panthers are 6-5. They’re not great by any stretch of the imagination, but if the 49ers can’t put any pressure on Young, they just might pull off the upset.
Too bad the 49ers didn’t trade a pick for an edge rusher at the deadline two weeks ago.
