Should the 49ers have played for the tie?

I never thought this would be an argument, but here we are. One of the storylines continuing after the San Francisco 49ers’ loss to the Seattle Seahawks Monday was on if Kyle Shanahan should have dialed things up for a tie. The 49ers had an opportunity to kill the clock via some run game but instead passed the ball. This of course allowed ample time for the Seahawks thanks to the incompletions.

Which begs the question, should the 49ers had been killing more clock to play for the tie?

In hindsight, I was a bit surprised that the 49ers didn’t mix some running plays in there with a “Either we win or no one does,” mentality. I don’t want Kyle Shanahan to take three knees in a row or run three running plays up the gut, but a carry may have worked in mixing things up, at least when you know it’s going to be your last possession given the clock and you saw that Raheem Mostert was getting some ground.

Kyle Shanahan was asked in his press conference about this ordeal as well and answered the whole run-game question as well:

“That’s not necessarily playing for a tie. If we would’ve thought three runs were the best plays to go with, we would’ve done that. Just running, not trying to get yards and run the clock off, I think you know that answer. I’m pretty sure that we all know that answer. I would hope that everyone in the world would be pretty disappointed in that. No, when I look back at that, I wish we had the clock moving and we had incompletions and that could take it over. I should’ve just called a play that we didn’t have an incompletion on and would’ve kept the clock running. See how many different ways can I answer that?”

The last time the 49ers were slapped with a tie was when they played the Los Angeles Rams in the 2012 season. Coincidentally, that game was also lost on missed field goals. It also was the first time you saw Colin Kaepernick come in on plays that were not the Colin Kaepernick package, but that’s another story. If you want something funny, just see how the players reacted to the tie in that game.

And if you want something even funnier, here’s Fooch talking about the tie. Minus a beard.

Ok, back to Monday’s game. We ‘ve been filling up comments but haven’t discussed it proper and since we’re a few hours away before the 49ers take on the Cardinals, I figured you may want to make your arguments for or against the tie. Should the 49ers have played for a tie? Or were you happy with them getting aggressive to go for the win?