SANTA CLARA — Put the analytics in the trash.
Chargers coach Brandon Staley might pride himself on being equal parts progressive and aggressive — someone who follows the data, and eschews conventional (and cowardly) football wisdom — but the 49ers put all that next-generation thinking in its place Sunday night at Levi’s Stadium.
The Niners won with short field goals, a swarming defense, and a run game that refused to relent.
Bullies don’t need to go by the numbers.
The Niners’ 22-16 win over the Chargers moved the Niners to 5-4 and strongly increased the team’s chances of making the playoffs this season.
But the win was also a blueprint for the rest of the regular season, and the postseason, after that.
It was “January football” played in mild weather before Thanksgiving.
Was it charmless and brutish? Sure.
Conservative and predictable? Absolutely.
The Niners won behind two 20-yard field goals and one from 26 yards. It was enough to make a Big 12 coach shudder and a Madden player rage-quit. It doesn’t lend itself to social media, top-play montages, or let’s be honest, national television audiences. The fine folks at Pro Football Focus probably broke a monitor or two watching it.
The Niners’ ideal game plan might be downright regressive.
It doesn’t matter.
This is a style that the 49ers know they can execute week in, week out.
And that makes it a winning brand of football for San Francisco.
Substance will always beat style, even in the modern, pass-happy NFL. There’s still a place for physicality and situational football in this league, as evidenced by the team’s 2019 and 2021 seasons.
“Run the ball and play great defense” is the lofty goal of football coaches around the league. It’s an ideal that’s often abandoned mid-game, if not mid-week.
But the Niners are doing it, and they will keep living it so long as it works.
That could be a long time yet.
The Niners’ backfield — if it can stay healthy — is as impressive as any in the NFL. Niners fans have seen Christian McCaffrey for three games now, but his burst and bounce as a ball carrier remain exciting. The return of Elijah Mitchell from injured reserve Sunday provided the Niners the necessary second workhorse to control the game on the ground.
Collectively, they ran 13 times for 41 yards in the first half. That’s an unremarkable 3.1-yards-per-rush clip — the kind of return that would lead to other coaches throwing more in the second half.
Not Kyle Shanahan.
The Niners ran even more in the second half. Mitchell was the standout, but McCaffrey had his moments, too. In the end, the duo ran 32 times for 127 yards, even as the Niners trailed for all but the final 7:54 of the game.
This isn’t a fad. It’s a lifestyle. And the Niners’ refusal to quit running the ball eventually led to the Chargers breaking just enough for San Francisco to take the lead.
Meanwhile, the Niners’ defense attempted to execute the same kind of game plan. San Francisco might give up yards, but they end every play with a hit — usually a big one. Niners defenders love it. Opposing skill-position players? Not so much.
Sunday night was the perfect case study in the value of defensive physicality, albeit not for entirely above-board reasons.
The Niners likely kept four points off the board at the end of the first half after linebacker Dre Greenlaw blasted Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert with a helmet-to-helmet hit on a scramble. Greenlaw was ejected for the hit — one of a handful of questionable blasts in the first half — and Herbert was sidelined by the game’s concussion spotter. The Chargers settled for a field goal and a 16-10 lead.
The Chargers didn’t score in the second half — the Niners’ five-man third-down rush was able to get home again and again — and Herbert, who carved up the Niners in the first half (14-of-21, 161 yards, a touchdown) completed only seven of his 14 second-half passes for 35 yards and an interception in the second half.
All this, while the Niners held the Chargers to 17 rushing yards in the second half.
You don’t need an analytics department to know that’s bad offense and outstanding defense.
It’s all so reminiscent of last season, albeit with more offensive weapons.
Would it be fun to see those weapons work all over the field? Absolutely. But winning is more fun, and this model doesn’t require Jimmy Garoppolo to throw the ball into tight windows. The Niners’ quarterback has now gone back-to-back games without an interception. The Niners are 5-0 when he isn’t intercepted and 0-3 when he is this season.
Again, this is a winning formula for San Francisco.
This isn’t to say that fans should expect some second-half run from San Francisco — only to posit that they will win enough to actually play serious January games playing this way.
That’s the goal, isn’t it?
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