After the San Francisco 49ers faced a tough loss against the Cleveland Browns, head coach Kyle Shanahan voiced his disappointment with the team's run defense, which allowed a season-high 160 rushing yards on Sunday.
"I'm not sure the exact stat compared to the others, but if I had to guess, it was our most missed tackles on the year," Shanahan said.
Shanahan was on point. According to Pro Football Focus, the 49ers defense had a season-high 10 missed tackles in Cleveland.
"I thought they got our edges way too much, just blocking down on our D-ends and getting around. We played a lot more two-shell defense and when you play two-shell defense you're a little bit behind in the run game. But we've been able to stop guys pretty good in that way. When they got our ends and we didn't get our safeties downhill, they bled us out too much.
"And when you add on a couple of those missed tackles and everything, it was way too much, especially when you've got a quarterback coming in who hasn't started yet. The best way to make that guy uncomfortable is to take away the run game and with 160 yards in that, we obviously didn't. That was disappointing, especially on those last two drives."
Defensive tackle Arik Armstead, the 49ers' longest-tenured player, couldn't agree more.
"He was right," Armstead said Tuesday morning on KNBR's "Murph and Mac" show. "Obviously, he has to answer questions about the game, and he's 100 percent right. One hundred and sixty yards rushing is unacceptable for us. That's not our standard. That wasn't our goal going into this game, and that's not our goal each week.
"I talk about it on my podcast. The first thing I look at is the rushing yards total for the opponent, and if that is under 70 yards, then I would say that we probably won the game. And our goal each week is to obviously keep them under 100."
The 49ers are undefeated in the last 17 games in which they've held opponents to under 100 rushing yards. They've won the last 23 games in which they've held their opponents to under the 70-yard rushing mark. You have to go back to Week 5 of 2018 to find a game in which they kept an opponent under 70 rushing yards but lost.
"So 160 is unacceptable," Armstead continued. "Kudos and hats off to them. They came out with a lot of design runs, trying to attack our scheme with whams, traps, toss plays, reverses, and did a good job of managing the game and managing the clock and time of possession.
"Obviously that was a goal of theirs with [QB] Deshaun [Watson] being out, and having P.J. Walker, not their starter, in the game. So I think they did a good job of that. They made some crucial plays.
"But when I look at the game, there was a lot of leaky yards out there. I don't think it was just the entire game, us not being able to stop them. I think there were some crucial moments that extended drives. I think there were some leaky yards and a few run plays that led to the total being 160, which is unacceptable, and which will get cleaned up, and be better moving forward."
Despite the setback against the Browns, Armstead sees it as a learning opportunity that could benefit the team down the stretch.
You can listen to the entire conversation with Armstead below.
Comments