As a team, the San Francisco 49ers outclass the Carolina Panthers by a significant margin. That showed on Sunday when the former dismantled the latter 37-15. Kyle Shanahan's squad has looked improved over the last two games, much more so than compared to their Week 3 outing against the Denver Broncos. The Niners outscored the Los Angeles Rams and the Panthers, their next two opponents, by a combined score of 61-24 and currently sit atop the NFC West standings.
After two convicting victories, San Francisco's stock has not been higher this season. Still, things were not perfect against the Panthers, and the 49ers' head coach saw one glaring flaw in his team's effort this past weekend.
"It was good because we came out with a real good win, and I believe we should have, but you've always got to play good to do that," Shanahan said Thursday on KNBR's Tolbert & Copes show. "Just a couple of plays go a different way, and that's a ballgame. You saw the defense, who unlocked the game a little. ... We scored on our first drive. I thought we were going to go down again and score on our second drive, hopefully, get up 14-0.
"Then we had that setback with George's (Kittle) fumble that kind of slowed us down a little bit. But then we ended up getting to 10. The defense kind of locked it before the half with that pick-six, which got us to 17.
"You get in the second half, we had those two bad kick returns, which I thought put our defense in a tough situation, which made it somewhat close. I thought Jimmy (Garoppolo) made some great plays on third down, which kept us on the field when it didn't look like we were going to. And on those drives, especially after both those kick returns, we were able to answer both drives.
"When we did struggle a little bit on defense and special teams, the offense went down and scored 14 [as a result of] two drives in a row, which kind of ended it."
Looking at the box score, things appeared to go well for the 49ers in Charlotte. They never trailed in the game. However, once Shanahan reviewed the film from the entire contest, he had at least one big concern.
"[The win] was nice, and it felt good, but it was also nice after a good victory to where you could find a lot on the tape that I thought we played a little tired, honestly," Shanahan admitted. "And when we really watched it, it wasn't that guys were loafing or anything, but it looked like we had just played a Monday night game, a real emotional game, and then six days of rest. I didn't think we looked as good as we should have.
"It was nice after such a good win to be able to go a little bit harder on the guys and stuff [on] Monday, and kind of regain their focus this week."
The 49ers spent this week practicing at The Greenbrier in West Virginia. They will hold on more practice—a Friday afternoon session—before boarding a plane for Atlanta, where they will face the Falcons on Sunday.
You can listen to the entire conversation with Shanahan below.