49ers film room: The plays that decided the 49ers fate in Super Bowl 58

The plays on offense that prevented the 49ers from winning the Super Bowl.

The 49ers fell flat in Super Bowl 58 at the end of overtime 25-22 to the Kansas City Chiefs, the second time in four seasons that the 49ers succumbed to the Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs in this game. But you knew all that. It was a heartbreaking and devastating loss in Las Vegas for all involved from the 49ers organization. On top of that, defensive coordinator Steve Wilks was fired three days later after the dust settled.

To their credit, the defense held Mahomes to 19 points in regulation and only surrendered one touchdown after a muffed punt. There was still a busted coverage on that play but the defense performed well. However, reports surfaced that Kyle Shanahan along with a handful of defensive assistants had put their own hands on Wilks’s game plan for the Super Bowl and had veto authority for any calls they didn’t like.

In other words, Shanahan basically had to tell Wilks what Mahomes and the Chiefs offense would do and how to defend it based on what Mahomes likes and doesn’t like. If true, that’s problematic. I tend to lean toward that being true because I find it hard to believe that Wilks suddenly found the winning formula for the Super Bowl after what amounted to a lousy second half of the season on defense and especially in the two previous playoff games.

Nonetheless, the defense was less of an issue until the late 4th quarter and overtime. No, the bulk of the night was determined by what the 49ers offense did, or rather failed to do, that contributed to the loss. And dozens of plays show the importance of when just one player fails to do their job, it has a ripple effect that leads to the kind of finish we witnessed.

In all likelihood, if they don’t screw up just one or two of these plays, they would have won the game. I have no doubt in my mind that we’d be celebrating a Super Bowl victory. Instead, the sheer multitude of bad plays was a lot to stomach because despite those mistakes, they were never out of it. Until they were.

The tone was set very early in the game on the first drive and a fumble that felt inevitable. Well, maybe it did after it happened but I definitely got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when the game started.

Even still, every play on the opening drive was a first down play minus the second play of the game, an 18 yard pass completion. The offense was moving the ball at over 9 yards per play on the opening drive with runs by Christian McCaffrey and a play action completion to Kyle Juszczyk. Any kind of points on this drive would have been huge in a 3-point game.

The offense got into 21 personnel to open the game on the first 5 plays. On the McCaffrey fumble, the offense is running outside zone to the strong side. Right guard Jon Feliciano is unable to get his head to the play side of Leo Chenal and run him off to the sideline. Left guard Aaron Banks, who has a tough assignment trying to cut off and seal Mike Pennel’s back door slant to the A-gap, can’t get his head outside of Pennel either.

The result was both Chenal and Pennel bottling up the run and forcing the fumble. To be fair, McCaffrey shouldn’t fumble but it happens. He’s carrying the ball in his right hand into traffic.

George Kittle, whom I thought gave a terrible effort at the end of his block on George Karlaftis, doesn’t end up playing until whistle, and Karlaftis is able to recover the ball. Multiple mistakes here. The fumble deflated the offense in my own opinion and even though the defense got the ball back and forced a fumble later in the half, they still took a minimum of three points off the board with this mistake on the opening drive.

Later in the first quarter, the 49ers missed another prime scoring opportunity to hit on an explosive pass when Brock Purdy overthrew Brandon Aiyuk in the end zone.

The offense was trying to take advantage of the Chiefs desire to limit Deebo Samuel and his run after the catch ability by simulating a fake bubble screen. Purdy motioned Juszczyk out to fake stalk block the corner and Aiyuk released inside to fake crack block the edge defender. The idea was to get the defense to overplay the bubble screen to Deebo and get Aiyuk or Juszczyk open downfield on a deep vertical route.

The Chiefs defended it decently well by rolling their coverage to the trips side post snap with the motion that the 49ers used. From a clean pocket with time to throw though, Purdy had Aiyuk open for a touchdown. It doesn’t “look like” Aiyuk is open, but Purdy knows he’s open because he can see the leverage of the safety to that side is vulnerable because he’s flat-footed trying to play top down on Aiyuk's vertical. Aiyuk just runs past him and he can’t recover.

But the ball is about 8 yards too deep into the end zone. He just put too much air on it. He read the leverage correctly, saw Aiyuk would be open, but air mailed. It does maybe look like Aiyuk slows up just a bit but it was still not catchable.

Speaking of Aiyuk, he was getting open nearly all game long.

Deebo? Deebo had probably his worst game as a 49ers and it was clear he was the focal point of the entire offense all game long, finishing with three catches on 11 targets and three carries for 8 yards.

He was having trouble separating all game long versus the Chiefs secondary, who forced him to be something he’s not: a pure route runner. This play shows exactly how ineffective Deebo was in this game as a receiving threat.

He’s supposed to be running a deep post route but is never able to get inside of the defender to run the post. It turns into basically a go ball route from Deebo. He gives Purdy no room to throw as a result. On a post route like this, it’s imperative that the receiver gets inside the defender’s leverage and to the post portion of the stem. If he stays outside, it makes the throw 10 times more difficult and isn’t really a post route at that point anymore.

To make matters worse, the 49ers were unable to run the ball effectively versus Kansas City defensive fronts after the first drive. The Chiefs employed a variety of fronts and run blitzes to slow down the 49ers ground game and it was effective. Here, they got into a late 6-1 front defense after the 49ers set their formation. The late shift messes with the 49ers blocking scheme.

Right guard Jon Feliciano, who spent the days after the Super Bowl throwing shade and then apologizing to Spencer Burford for a missed assignment on the final offensive play of their season, had his own issues in this game.

In the video, Feliciano steps down the wrong way as the Chiefs defensive tackle backdoor slant the run game, leaving McKivitz to try and step back inside to make the block. Usually, those two would combo block before McKivitz would move to the second level to block a linebacker. I’ll have more on the 49ers run game later in a separate article.

At the start of the third quarter, the offense was unable to score after recording three straight three-and-outs to start the half, with their first drive starting at mid field after intercepting Patrick Mahomes. In addition to the run game article I am working on, I’ll also have a separate article on this three drive sequence as well but again, it was another filled with execution issues.

The first play after the interception was a shot play on a play action concept called “burner.” This play action pass protection cost the 49ers at least two plays in this game, the other being the famous 3rd-and-4 in overtime, the one referenced above that Feliciano commented on. The culprit on this play is Aaron Banks, who blocked down inside and let the blitzing linebacker through.

I mentioned this on X (twitter) and former offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz quote tweeted me saying I was wrong because there was no way they’d slide away from Chris Jones. But Jones slants inside, giving the down blocking guard an easier block to execute. If Aaron Banks would have fanned out to his left, he would have picked up the blitzing linebacker as they had all the rushers accounted for along the front.

In addition to this, we know Banks is wrong because every other linemen is stepping down to their left. Had Purdy not had the free rusher in his face, he might have hit Kittle who was open with a step on the defender or he could have checked down for some decent yardage.

Two of the biggest plays for the 49ers came on two separate 3rd-and-4’s, one on their last offensive snap in regulation and one on their last offensive snap of the season in overtime and they were plays where the receiver options were nearly all open but pass protection issues again reared their ugly head.

On the first play after the two minute warning, the 49ers went into a 2x2 formation with a condensed receiver stack to the right and a more spread out look to the left. Instead of keeping McCaffrey in the backfield as a pass blocker, Kittle was aligned to Purdy’s right in the backfield.

The offense is running a double slant concept to the left with Jennings as the outside receiver and Aiyuk in the slot. The Chiefs show man coverage with a potential blitz from the right. Center Jake Brendel alerts the offensive line to the rush and I’m assuming putting the line in a “5-0” pass protection call since he’s now covered. A 5-0 pass protection call means that the offensive line will block the 5 most dangerous rushers across the front.

This would mean Kittle would have any potential 6th rusher but he has to scan for it. He likely thinks it’s Reid but it’s actually McDuffie blitzing from the slot. Kittle never gets there and never sees the slot blitz from the left and ends up blocking a defender who’s already blocked. To be fair, Kittle never plays in this position and Shanahan should not have had him there in a critical situation, though I get why he was there, most likely to alert the offense to the Chiefs blitz and coverage.

But Purdy is also partly responsible here. Whenever a safety caps the defender in front of him, meaning to align directly behind him, it’s a dead giveaway that the defender closest to the line of scrimmage is going to blitz.

Purdy should have recognized that pre-snap but he didn’t. With the free rusher in face, he tried to go to Jennings. Not a bad decision to throw to Jennings because the outside slant is usually always open against two deep safeties. And to be fair, there should not have been a free rusher. It would have been difficult to perfectly anticipate this happening when the protection called for 6 pass blockers.

On 3rd-and-4 on the last play of the season for the 49ers offense, the pass protection broke down again when, similar to the play way above with Banks, Spencer Burford stepped down the wrong way and allowing Chris Jones to get a free rush on Purdy.

It’s the same play action pass protection but just flipped. This would mean that Burford has the responsibility to fan out to his right to block Jones. Every linemen is stepping down to their right except Burford. If he so much as chips Jones, Purdy hits Jennings for a first down for sure and maybe a touchdown. After the game, Burford admitted that next time he needs to play within the scheme, alluding to basically freelancing and doing what he thought was right rather than doing his job.

There would still have been a free runner in Purdy’s face but it’s unlikely he affects the play because he’s coming from depth rather than the line of scrimmage. One more second and the 49ers might have been celebrating their 6th Lombardi trophy.

These are tough pills to swallow for the players, the coaches, Kyle Shanahan, the entire 49ers organization, and the fans. To know they made so many mistakes and seemed so unprepared to execute their basic assignments is truly sad and humbling. Unfortunately, we won’t know in what ways the players and Shanahan learn from this until we get into the season in 7 months. What we do know is they (and we) have to live with the sting of losing a 2nd Super Bowl in 4 seasons.