Irritated 49ers have no time for pity with quick turnaround originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SANTA CLARA – For better or worse, the 49ers don’t have time to dwell on another heartbreaking loss.
San Francisco’s 24-23 loss to the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium was the second loss in two weeks that the 49ers blew after blowing a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter.
And with a “Thursday Night Football” game against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field just four days away, the 49ers must quickly turn the page to prepare for another NFC West division battle.
“Yeah, that’s all we talked about there,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said after the game. “We’d love to sit here and get mad, we’d love to be able to do something about what just happened, but we can’t. There’s nothing you can do about these games once they’re over. I’ll tell the boys next time That we can do something is Thursday and it is better to just wait until Thursday than until next Sunday.”
“It sucks, but we don’t have time to sit here and have a pity party,” left tackle Trent Williams said of Shanahan’s message to the team after the game. “We still have a good football team and another opponent in the division and a short week, so we have to go.”
On the one hand, the quick turnaround, while stressful and inconvenient for a disjointed 49ers team, could be a blessing in disguise as San Francisco is forced to shift its focus away from the epic late-game collapse.
“The nice thing about football is that every loss is excruciatingly painful, but the nice thing is you usually get to play the next week,” tight end George Kittle said. “And if you get to play on Thursday, if you think about it for a long time, you’re just putting yourself in a hole.”
“I think we need to turn the page on this,” defensive end Nick Bosa added. “It’s pretty clear what happened and why we lost. I think it’s kind of a blessing in disguise that we’re playing on Thursday.”
On the other hand, turning the page quickly prevents the 49ers from fully analyzing their mistakes — and there were many — and identifying where they need to make improvements in the future.
“We have a quick game, a quick turnaround, it’s a unique situation,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “Obviously you want to solve the problems that are there. We won the game and we gave it away, but you have to wipe it away and move on to the next one. There really is no time to sulk or feel sorry for yourself, you have to move on.
“I wish we had a full week to clean up what we messed up.” [but] yes in the fact that you still have a chance in about four days.”
The 49ers have about twelve hours to lick their wounds before it’s time to dust themselves off and prepare for Seattle. It’s not ideal, but it’s the reality of the NFL.
And how they respond in four days will tell us a lot about what kind of team they are.
