Carlos Hyde put the blame squarely on his own shoulders

It was a disheartened Carlos Hyde that was in the locker room after the San Francisco 49ers loss to the Carolina Panthers. He was introspective and clearly his own worst critic after getting held to 34 yards on 14 carries and three receptions for 18 yards. Quite a difference from his 88 yard, two touchdown performance six days before, against the Rams. Hyde has previously been frustrated and defiant in the locker room after losses, but not this time.

When asked about Hyde’s performance and his emotions after the game, head coach Chip Kelly had this to say about the running back.

I don’t know. I’m unsure of what Carlos said because I didn’t read up on anything there. But, the one thing about this group is I think they all hold themselves accountable. It’s a group that doesn’t finger point and doesn’t say, ‘Hey, it was his fault or that guys fault. It’s not my fault.’ Everybody owns kind of what goes on when we win a game and everybody owns what goes on when we lose a game. It’s encouraging, like you said, if that’s how he feels. We’ll go through, we’ve got a process that we go through tomorrow morning in terms of our review and revision of the film and then pointing out kind of what you see. What should transpire, how this thing should develop, what it should look like and then we’ll move forward. You know, I think that’s what good teams do. They evaluate themselves. They’re not pointing fingers. They’re taking ownership in terms of what’s going on out there.

Hyde clearly wants to be the bell cow running back on the team and recognizes the responsibility that comes with the title. He spoke softly and looked as though he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, or at least the weight of the team’s loss. Here’s the full transcript:

Joe Staley mentioned that he saw a few things from Carolina’s defense that he hadn’t seen before. Is that what you saw?

What I saw is just me not performing. I come off a good week and then I perform that way, it’s unacceptable so I have to get better, I have to do better, I have to not put the ball on the ground. So, I’ll get better. I have to.

Did you think you were down?

I thought I was down but I can’t leave that question with the refs, you know? I have to give the ball back with to the ref.

Anything else other than putting out on the ground that you were unhappy with about your performance?

I wasn’t patient enough today. I was a little too fast on certain runs not letting them develop all the way. I just have to be more patient and be more decisive and get going.

What are you thoughts heading into Seattle this week?

It’s another great opponent we have coming up. So, offensively this week we have to take it to another level. We, offensively have to get better, myself, I have to definitely get better. Coaches will be calling my number and I’m the guy that’s going to be able to help win games for this team and it’s my job to put my team in a position to win and today I didn’t do that.

Is needing to be more patient part of being too amped up to play?

No. Just slow it down, you know? Things are probably not going as fast as I think they are. I just have to slow it down.

Carolina is a good team. Is there any positive to take from this game?

I mean we made some good plays, we put up points. I mean we can definitely go in and look at the film and see what we did good there but there’s also some bad things like I said me putting the ball on the ground and we’re just going to get back and watch the film on Tuesday. That’s going to tell us all what we did wrong, what we did right, and we’ll just go from there and get ready for Seattle.

Were you surprised at all that the score got close and you might have had a chance to win it?

No, Coach Rathman kept telling us on the sideline we just have to take one drive at a time, just get a touchdown one at a time and next thing you know we’re right there. We just gotta keep fighting and that’s what we did and you know, we have to ge better and I think we will. We’ll be fine.

It seem like after the snap you do linger for a moment, you need to do that even more?

Yeah. I just have to be more patient. I just can’t be rushing things and expect everybody to be moving at my pace. So, I just have to slow it down a little bit and let the play develop and then I can get going, and then I can run how I want to run. We’ll get it right.