The San Francisco 49ers emerged from Sunday's wild shootout at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome with a 48-46 win over the New Orleans Saints. Veteran cornerback Richard Sherman was excited about the victory but wasn't too happy about the defense's role in the game.

"It was unfortunate," Sherman responded when asked about the defensive performance. "It was like that one meme where the kid's getting interviewed after the game. He's just like, 'First half, they got us, but the second half, they got us too.'"


The 49ers defense gave up 465 yards of total offense, including 349 passing and 116 rushing, and six touchdowns to Drew Brees and the rest of the Saints offense.

"Thank goodness for our offense," Sherman continued. "Thank goodness for Jimmy Garoppolo, George Kittle, obviously, Kyle Shanahan. The entire offense made plays when we had to, made it hard down the stretch.

"Obviously, there were some things in there, some circumstances that you can't control, but we're thankful that we got the win. It's a great team win."

The 49ers may have won the game, but the defensive outing was clearly frustrating for Sherman.

"It's frustrating more because of simple plays," Sherman told reporters. "You know, those things we've gone over. It's not like they beat us with a bunch of trick, misdirection plays, and they just got us. These are day-one football plays that we've just got to execute better.


"But give credit to them. Drew saw them. He found the people who were open. He made the plays, Sean (Payton) called them. So you've got to give them credit. They had a good plan coming in, but we've got to execute better. We've got to have a better plan, we've got to execute our plan better."

Speaking of Garoppolo, Sherman spoke at length about his quarterback and the critics who have maybe unfairly judged him all season.

"I think he's lost three or four games (over his career), and you've got people saying he's not a great quarterback," Sherman said. "Anybody else wins that many games in their first [23] starts, you give them a ton of credit but I think today, we rode his back, and we needed to, and he delivered."

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