The San Francisco 49ers suffered a disappointing loss that surprised some after the offensive production the week prior. The 49ers will be looking for much more than a moral victory on Sunday in their first division match up against the Arizona Cardinals. In the second of their two game road series, the team will again face crowd noise issues and will need to figure out a way to communicate to avoid costly penalties on the line.
Colin Kaepernick spoke to the media after Sunday's loss to the Steelers, and explained a few of the issues that the offense dealt with.
How is the team responding to the loss so far?
Yeah, we have to move on to the next game. We didn't play our best football today and it showed. There were times that we had opportunities to make plays and we didn't.
On the long drive that led to a field goal:
Yeah, you can't settle for field goals in that situation. Obviously with an offense like the Steelers have, you have to be able match touchdown for touchdown and we didn't do that today.
Regarding the delay of game/time clock issues, was there confusion?
No, it wasn't confusion, we were just having a problem with our coach to quarterback as far as the clarity, so a little bit slower, not as much time at the line.
There's been an impressive win and a bad loss. Do you have a sense of what team you have?
Yeah, I think we're more the team of game one. Tonight, or today, we didn't play our best football. I think everyone knows that. For us, we have to regroup, get ready for Arizona next week.
On knowing Steelers D would be keying in on Carlos Hyde:
Definitely, as a defensive coordinator you're going to notice if someone runs like he did last week and you have to address that. They did, so we got to our passing game, we just got to it a little bit too late today.
On multiple short passes early in the game:
You have to be able to take what the defense is going to give you. They were playing deep on most of the plays so we're not going to be able to throw over their head or down the field. That limits you to shorter underneath passes.
On the fumbled hand off with Carlos Hyde, who took the blame on the mistake:
Just something we have to clean up this week. We can't have those mistakes.
Is there solace in moving the ball in the second half?
Yeah, there's things we can take away from this game as positives, but we don't play for moral victories. It's something that we have to look at this week and move on and and use it as things to learn from moving forward.