“We own it, We fix it, We move on”

That wasn’t much fun. I followed the 49ers game on my phone while watching 11-year old kids on youth football teams run into each other for 2 hours. Both games essentially went the same, with “my” team not having an answer for an unexpected outburst of offense from a few select players. The 49ers traveled to Heinz field and Mike Tomlin’s squad did exactly what he discussed earlier in the week; they tested the 49ers young defensive backs. The defense did not have an answer for Antonio Brown and it got ugly in a hurry. We could sit and rattle off the stats but that would only make this linger longer.The team is heading home and as Jim Tomsula says “We own it, we fix it, and we move on.” As fans, no sense sitting on this one any longer than necessary. You can’t get those three hours back so as a fanbase we turn towards Arizona and get this ugly morning off of our minds.

Tramaine Brock, although impressive when healthy, is still relatively young and hasn’t started a full season. While he may be a veteran in the league, he certainly doesn’t feel like a consistent performer that you might expect a vet to be. Kenneth Acker across the field is essentially a rookie as well. Asking those two to cover Antonio Brown for longer than a couple of seconds just isn’t an effective gameplan. I expected the 49ers, with Pittsburgh missing Bell and Bryant, to force Pittsburgh to throw underneath and to make clean tackles and instead Roethlisberger went out and made Darrius Heyward-Bay look like a decent receiver, perhaps his best work on the day. Wilhoite being on the field so much wasn’t helping with the craftiness of Brown and his ability to get open anywhere on the field but monitoring the continued development of Jaquiski Tartt may give us more insight into why Eric Mangini decided to keep the rookie off the field despite his impressive performance in Week 1.

Without getting pressure on Big Ben, the defense was left to chase Brown who sets his routes up better than any receiver coming in and out of breaks. While Brown can separate with speed, he also uses fluid and efficient movements to effectively separate as the ball is released at the top of his routes. Defensive backs that think that they have locked him down are left wondering how he found space so quickly. The pass rush was non-existent and that left Ben with nothing but time to find his receivers for big gains. The pass rush, whoever it may come from, will need to let this one go and get it right in practice this week because the Arizona Cardinals will do the exact same thing next week if Carson Palmer is given time. Bruce Arians loves big-armed quarterbacks who can test defenses with vertical routes. Vic Fangio, the beloved ex-coordinator of some of the best 49er defenses of the last two decades, watched his new Bears defense get torched this afternoon by the Cardinals and forever young Larry Fitzgerald.

The offense showed some encouraging signs but came back down to Earth after an impressive Week 1. Much of the issues today were narratives that had been spun all preseason. The offensive line was out-of-sync and couldn’t handle the three-man front of the Steelers that shouldn’t have given them so much trouble. Kap, based on his stats, seemed to play well but some of that may have been inflated because of the score and second-half situation. Overall, the offense needs to capitalize on drives that reach the redzone. If you had “Things a 49er fan might say for the last 3 years”, you’ve won the office lottery. Drives of double digit plays that get so close to the endzone simply need to produce more points, especially against teams like Pittsburgh that have acknowledged that they don’t expect to play great defense and want to outscore teams. To that end, the offense was highly ineffective. The long plays to Torrey Smith are exciting but they are not a sustainable expectation of this team. Drives that chew up the clock are how the 49ers will need to grind out games and allow the defense with young, recovering, or inexperienced players to sit on the sideline and learn from coaches in between drives.

As I write this, the Packers are up 7-0 on the Seahawks and the knot in my stomach from this morning is subsiding as I watch Russell Wilson fail to move the ball against the Packers’ defense. Tony Dungy called this a desperation game for the Seahawks, which is ridiculous, but any major let down from the team up North always eases the sting of one of our own losses. A few hours from now that feeling could be back if Wilson manages to pull some late game magic, which basically consists of Doug Baldwin yelling how underrated he is before some other unknown receiver catches his first pass of the game to win it. As far as the 49ers go, the game was ugly whether you watched it, heard it, followed on Twitter, or read the Australian blog that everyone has fallen in love with. That last one might not be true; if anyone could make the mess of the game this morning seem intriguing it would be the wordsmith behind that blog. The issues that were exposed today aren’t surprising and, if anything, they mimic some of the worries of fans for the last few months. The 49ers need to own it, fix, and move on because I won’t have an excuse to not watch next week.