MIAMI — The 49ers played like NFL champions through three and a half quarters Sunday, then simply weren’t opportunistic, weren’t sharp and weren’t lucky over the last seven minutes.
After reviewing the game, there were six players who stood out in Super Bowl LIV, five who symbolized the 49ers’ struggles and one guy — he’s fairly prominent — who fell somewhere in between.
The top six
Nick Bosa: The 49ers did an excellent job of limiting explosive plays by the Chiefs through three and a half quarters. The flip side is that Kansas City had a lot of plays per drive (three that went 10 plays or longer), and those added up during the course of the game. The 49ers defense was on the field for 79 snaps Sunday, which tied for most snaps all season (Week 12 vs. Green Bay).
Bosa played 61 snaps, the most of any defensive lineman in the game and the most he played all season. The Super Bowl was a microcosm of his rookie year. He not only held up well, he came away with the team’s highest grade, per Pro Football Focus. He had a season-high 12 quarterback pressures, including one sack in which he swiped the ball from Patrick Mahomes’ grasp. (Mahomes recovered.)
He also was a victim of an
obvious holding penalty on perhaps the biggest play of the game. Bosa looped through the middle on Mahomes’ 44-yard pass to Tyreek Hill midway through the fourth quarter. Chiefs left tackle Eric Fisher had him in an armbar, but no holding call was made.
Right tackle Mike McGlinchey: Both of the team’s tackles played well against the Chiefs just as they have over the last two months. Left tackle Joe Staley would have been mentioned here, but his false start in the fourth quarter came when the 49ers couldn’t afford a break in their momentum. An under-reported storyline from the game: The Chiefs’ section of the crowd was so loud the 49ers had to use silent counts in the second half and committed two big false starts in the fourth quarter. Both were committed by the only two 49ers offensive players — Staley and Emmanuel Sanders — who had started in a previous Super Bowl.
Linebacker Dre Greenlaw: There was some question as to whether Kwon Alexander, who had been strong in coverage before he was injured on Oct. 31, would re-take his starting weakside role against the pass-happy Chiefs. The 49ers made the right choice in keeping Greeenlaw there. He was very good at guarding the flats and cutting off runners at the sidelines on Sunday.
The fifth-round rookie is the one who strung out the third-and-long screen pass that forced the Chiefs to punt at the end of the first half. His speed was evident throughout a season in which Greenlaw seemed to get better with every game he started.
Defensive tackle DeForest Buckner: Buckner, who’s been the bedrock of the 49ers defense since he was drafted in 2016, was overshadowed at times this season by Bosa and Arik Armstead. He had a very strong Super Bowl, contributing five pressures, including 1.5 sacks. He could have had another full sack in the third quarter, but Mahomes ran out of his grasp and picked up a sizable gain.
The 49ers will sit down with Buckner’s agent this offseason and try to work out a new contract. The fact that he had one of his better games this deep into the season underscores what makes him so valuable. He doesn’t just flash ability, he’s reliably good all of the time. Buckner has missed one game in four seasons.
Tight end George Kittle: The 49ers tight end had a 48-hour bug the week after the NFC Championship Game that caused him to lose weight. He was fine by the time the 49ers took off for Miami last week and had another fine performance. If he wasn’t called for pass interference in the second quarter and if a fourth-quarter pass in his direction hadn’t been batted down, Kittle might have been competing for an MVP award.
Receiver Deebo Samuel: The Chiefs hadn’t done much work against receivers who run the ball on sweeps and it showed in the game. Samuel finished with 53 rushing yards, a Super Bowl record for a receiver. He also caught a team-high five passes for 39 yards. The problem was that 62 of his 92 total yards occurred before halftime. Two of the last three throws to Samuel were incomplete. The final one was intercepted.
The bottom five
Guard Mike Person: Person, center Ben Garland and quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo combined for one of the biggest miscues of the game when, at the beginning of the second quarter, defensive tackle Chris Jones got past Person and Mike Pennel did the same to Garland to put pressure on Garoppolo. The quarterback should have thrown the ball away but instead floated a pass downfield where it was easily intercepted by cornerback Bashaud Breeland. Kansas City converted the takeaway into a field goal.
Person later missed a block on Pennel at the goal line, but Raheem Mostert still was able to power his way into the end zone for a touchdown. To be fair to Person, Jones had two critical pass bat-downs in the fourth quarter. (One came on the would-be throw to Kittle.) The reason he got them, however, wasn’t because he was dominating Person but because he didn’t get any penetration on those plays and was instead in Garoppolo’s passing lane. Pro Football Focus credited Jones with just one quarterback pressure — the one on Garoppolo’s interception — in the game.
Cornerback Richard Sherman: According to Pro Football Focus, Sherman gave up more receiving yards — 72 yards, and Mahomes was 5 of 5 when targeting Sherman — than in any game this season. As Dan Brown
documented in this piece, Sherman was excellent this year at not letting anyone get past him for a deep ball. But he allowed Sammy Watkins, who might not even be the Chiefs’ third-most explosive receiver, to slip past for a 38-yard gain that set up Kansas City’s go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter.
Richie James: The 49ers’ kick coverage wasn’t sharp in the divisional round against the Vikings and their kick-return game was atrocious against the Chiefs, who continually kicked short of the goal line and pounced on limp returns. How far did the 49ers get when forced to return a kickoff? To the 20-, 16-, 20- and 15-yard lines.
That’s mostly not James’ fault, of course. But he personified the punch-less return game and also muffed the contest’s opening punt. One standout who should be noted: Linebacker Elijah Lee, who had three stops on kick coverage. The Chiefs weren’t much better than the 49ers in that facet of the game. The three kicks they returned ended up at the 26-, 19- and 18-yard lines.
Safety Jimmie Ward: Ward was symbolic of the 49ers defense. He was great through three and a half quarters. In fact, the team’s safeties were strong overall.
Tarvarius Moore played only five snaps when the 49ers moved to their dime defense. Most were eventful. He broke up one red-zone pass and intercepted another. He had a critical pass-interference penalty against Travis Kelce in the end zone when he failed to get a hand on the big tight end initially and allowed him to get past him on the way to the end zone.
Ward and Jaquiski Tartt, meanwhile, spent most of the game hawking long passes and zooming up for effective run support. Ward, however, got turned around by Tyreek Hill on the massive, 44-yard play in the fourth quarter. He also took a poor angle on Damien Williams’ game-sealing touchdown run down the sideline. (Bosa could have done a better job setting the edge on the play.) Both miscues were uncharacteristic of how Ward, a free agent next month, played this year.
Kwon Alexander: He ended up playing 21 snaps, which came when the 49ers were in their base defense or at the goal line. Their goal-line defense was badly overmatched by the Chiefs’ trickery whether it was a read-option run by Mahomes or a play-action fake that had the linebackers — Alexander and Fred Warner included — biting hard on the run and allowing Kelce an easy catch for a touchdown.
Alexander also overran three plays, something he had a reputation for doing when he was with the Buccaneers and something he was guilty of in his first game back from his injury, the 49ers’ opening playoff win against the Vikings. Alexander played 66 snaps in the playoffs and finished with three tackles and five missed tackles.
Finally, a note on Garoppolo. He doesn’t fall on either of these lists because he was neither great nor awful. He made a bad decision on Breeland’s interception. But as
colleague David Lombardi noted, Garoppolo was 17 of 20 to begin the fourth quarter and, had he maintained that clip, probably would have been named the game’s MVP. The difference is that while Mahomes, the eventual MVP, came up with a game-changing throw to an open receiver, Garoppolo couldn’t hit Sanders when he sprung free deep down the center of the field with 1:40 remaining.
Mahomes was unbeatable down the stretch while Garoppolo was merely unremarkable.