The 49ers melted down at sweltering Levi’s Stadium and lost Sunday to the Cardinals, 24-23.
They lost kicker Jake Moody to a second-quarter ankle injury, impacting their strategy the rest of the way, but they also turned the ball over inside their own 20-yard line (Brock Purdy’s third-quarter interception) and Arizona’s (Jordan Mason’s fourth-quarter fumble).
Purdy finished 19-of-35 for 244 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions, including the game-sealing one that fluttered to Kyzir White when Purdy was hit while throwing his final pass.
Mason led the 49ers with 89 yards on 14 carries, the last of which was the one he fumbled fighting for extra yardage at the Cardinals’ 9-yard line, where reserve linebacker Jesse Luketa punched it out.
Brandon Aiyuk was San Francisco’s leading receiver with 147 yards on eight catches.
Kyler Murray was 19-of-30 for the Cardinals for 195 yards, one touchdown and one interception. He also ran for a 50-yard touchdown to open the scoring. Bruiser James Connor led Arizona with 86 yards on 19 carries, plus a key two-point conversion in the fourth quarter.
Here’s what the 49ers had to say after the loss:
On refocusing for Thursday’s game:
That’s all we talked about in there. We’d love to sit here and get pissed. We’d love to be able to do something about that, but you can’t do anything about these games once they end.
On Brandon Aiyuk’s game:
Did a real good job beating man coverage, made some good plays in the zone had some good run after the catch.
On Mason’s fumble:
When you’re fighting for extra yards, you gotta be smart with that ball and looked like he just got a little careless with it and they knocked it out.
On finding a replacement kicker:
They’re almost independent contractors, so we’ll get them in as fast as possible and get the best guy we can. I’m sure that will be for a few weeks, whatever. I’m not sure, but I know they told me a high ankle and that’s never short.
On changing focus to Seattle on a short week:
We gotta do it quick. We got a Thursday night game, great team in the Seahawks on the road. So big challenge ahead. If we sit and dwell, then I think obviously things won’t go our way, so we have to turn the page quick.
On the offense:
When the defense is getting stops, we can’t just turn the ball right back over.
On red zone issues:
Everything’s pretty tight. It’s close, and we gotta be aggressive. It starts with me. I’m the guy with the ball, so you know, being aggressive with certain guys and matchups and giving guys chances. I just got to be hard on myself with that. Obviously you want to be smart and protect the ball, but when we got a good matchup and a good look, we’ve got to rip it.
On Aiyuk:
He was just doing his thing. He wasn’t trying to do anything too out of the ordinary. We just had some good plays and matchups dialed up for him and I thought he did a great job of getting in and out of cuts and obviously catching the ball, making plays.
On whether missing McCaffrey is part of the red zone woes:
You can do so much with Christian out of the backfield, line him up as a receiver and stuff like that. Defenses have to account and have a play for that. So, I mean, it is a little different. But regardless, man, I think we have the players and the talent to still make it happen.
On Mason’s fumble:
We all got his back, man. Obviously he’s been running really really hard. He’s been doing such a great job, and so that’s how football goes, man. It could take one play.
On the mood in the locker room:
The standard here, man, is excellence. And what we’ve proven the last couple years of what we can play at, that’s what we’re trying to get to. But man, every year is different with just the team, the chemistry and getting guys together. You got new keys, some guys leave, so I think all throughout this, it’s early in the season and we’re still trying to find our true identity as a team. We’re getting there, and it’s a couple plays away, a couple drives away from gelling and gluing together. But I’m confident that we’ll find it. We just got to get into a rhythm and play complementary team football.
On what he can do better to avoid interceptions:
I just got to know if I do have a pressure and what my answer can be within that. I was locked in on BA and trying to hit him in the end, so I think I can do better in that area. And then the first one, try to get the ball to George quicker instead of double patting it. There’s little things like that. It’s a game of inches for a reason. There’s not a lot of margin for error.
On the loss:
We had the game won and we gave it away, but you got to kind of wipe it and get on to the next.
On whether he felt the game slipping away:
No, my mindset’s always next play, best play. Defensively we got to learn how to finish games. We’re not there yet, so that’s the most frustrating part.
On the defense’s past success:
It’s a completely new group. It’s a new year, it’s a new group. You take the experiences that you got in the past and apply them to the present. … It’s going to require even more effort, more attention to detail, more everything at this point.
On the impact of injuries:
I don’t really care about the injuries. You suit that thing up, you better be ready to go. Point blank, period.
On the difference between winning and losing:
It’s not about how good your players are, how explosive an offense is or good your defense is. If you’re turning the ball over and you’re not making those plays on defense in the crucial moments, you’re going to lose in the NFL. I haven’t lost any confidence in the team. It’s early. It’s a long year. We’ve been through worse and I think we’ll respond well.
On the quick turnaround:
I think we need to turn the page on this one. It’s pretty clear what happened and why we lost, so I think it’s kind of a blessing in disguise that we’re playing on Thursday.
On the momentum swing of losing Moody:
Not having your kicker is tough and hopefully he’s going to be all right but Mitch did a good job on his one kick. But it really shouldn’t come down to that in the end.
On whether heat wore down players late:
I wouldn’t say it affects people on long drives. Conner’s a really big, good back and makes people miss. I think I had a couple misses there, too. Just got to get them down.
On adjusting to opposing offenses:
The preparation we’ve had has been great teams, but teams are playing us different and doing things differently, and we need to adjust a little better.
On the loss:
Not scoring any points in the second half is really tough as an offense, especially when we expect ourselves to be significantly better than that. As an offense, we want to take that game into our hands and we had every opportunity to blow that one out. We didn’t do that.
On the sudden change of losing Moody:
Losing your kicker’s huge, especially when you have a guy who’s good from, what, 57 yards. … But I think our special teams and defense gave us every opportunity to win. And I mean, as an offensive player has been here for eight years, I feel like that one’s mostly on us more than anything else. We have to finish drives — to not turn the ball over, to make it easier on ourselves, which we didn’t do.
On whether there’s any doubt about finishing games:
There’s none of that. I would say that we just have to go out and prove that we can do it.
On whether the team might be coming out of halftime overconfident:
I wouldn’t say overconfidence. I know we didn’t score any points in the second half. I don’t know what our first drive was but I feel like w were moving the ball well the whole day. But when you end up with turnovers, it’s just turnover on downs, interceptions, fumble, whatever it is, it’s just hard to win football games when you play like that.
