One of the reasons the 49ers found themselves in an ugly dogfight on Sunday was the horrific number of penalties they committed. I suppose my post yesterday about penalties was good or bad timing. The 49ers committed 12 penalties for 70 yards that primarily seemed to hurt the offense.
The defense had their share of penalties with a couple of offsides/encroachment calls, but the false starts really seemed to hurt the offense. The 49ers offense can produce some big plays, but when they are getting put into 3rd and 10+ situations frequently, the conversions will not happen at a consistent level. And that's really the case for most offenses. When you shoot yourself in the foot, it's that much harder to get to the first down marker.
The 49ers enter arguably the toughest stretch of the schedule as they will face the Philadelphia Eagles, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Detroit Lions. Even if Michael Vick does not play with his broken right hand, that pass defense is looking rather filthy. If the 49ers get themselves into too many 3rd and longs, it is gonna be a long day next Sunday. They need to clean up the sloppy penalties, and to be perfectly honest, a false start is as sloppy as they come.
On a side note, starting next week, we'll have a non-49ers thread to go along with our recap thread so we can distinguish the post-game 49ers discussion from the afternoon schedule discussion. For today, let's keep 49ers discussion in this thread, and non-49ers discussion in the previous thread.