Tight end George Kittle felt the San Francisco 49ers didn't play up to their standard on Sunday against the Atlanta Falcons. Kittle didn't want to blame injuries. Instead, he believes the team lacked their typical intensity in the 28-14 defeat.
"You could use (injuries) as an excuse, but we're the San Francisco 49ers," Kittle said after the game. "We have a standard that we play at. We play at a very high level, a lot of energy, 100 percent effort on every single play. I haven't watched the tape yet, but I don't know that we gave that today at every single position.
"We had a lot of young guys play. We're missing a lot of guys. We've just got to make sure we're playing at that level every single snap or that's going to happen, especially when you are down guys."
The day after the game, head coach Kyle Shanahan was asked about Kittle's comments and if he agreed that the 49ers lacked intensity against the Falcons.
"I would disagree with that," Shanahan said. "I mean, I like George saying that. That's, to me, how you feel, especially when a team kind of dominates the game in terms of how they ran the ball, with the amount of carries that they got compared to us, the time of possession, and stuff like that.
"But I didn't look at any of the guys lacking intensity or [not] going after it. That was a very physical team. That's how they've played every single team they've played. That's why they've been in pretty much every game they've played. That's why they've been close to winning a number in a row. That's why they had a chance to come back versus Tampa."
So what was the reason for the 49ers, typically the bullies in football games, being bullied by an opponent and not getting anything going themselves?
Shanahan said, "I thought it came more down to the turnover [returned for a TD] that we had, and not converting on those third downs, that didn't allow us to get into our physicality with running the ball."
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