What Happened in Cleveland? Why the 49ers Lost to the Browns

The Niners had their greatest strength used against them.

The 49ers have just suffered their first loss of the season to a team that started a practice squad quarterback. What happened to those invincible 49ers we’ve seen all year, and should there be panic?

The Niners had their greatest strength used against them, stopping the run. The Niners are 2nd ranked at holding their opposition in the run game, today it looked like Cleveland took that title from them. They were consistently dominated at the line of scrimmage by Za’Darius Smith and Myles Garrett respectively. Without the run game working, it hinders their offense greatly. Denzel Ward shut down Deebo Samuel before he went out due to a shoulder injury. Deebo didn’t catch a single ball. When you can’t run the ball and your WR1 is useless, generating offense becomes impossible.

Sadly the injury bug has come to bite the Niners again, but at least it’s happening before the playoffs. Dre Greenlaw didn’t play and was a massive loss for the team. There were moments that showed they could stop the Browns inconsistent offense, punting 4 times, but then they would get hit by a big play or a big penalty. If Greenlaw was there, their defense could’ve held on for longer and held them down. But even if he was there, the offense still would’ve slowed down with the injuries to Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey, and Deebo Samuel. Williams was able to return, although he didn’t look comfortable, but the other two skill players were out the rest of the game. This killed their offense, they looked shell shocked. The Niners had 6 punts and 6 three and outs. That isn’t the Niners we’ve seen all year, but since they lost their two biggest threats I wouldn’t look too deep into it.

Jake Moody had a terrible day. So far into the year, he has been consistent at hitting his field goals, going 9/9 so far this year, but today he was terrible. He missed his two field goal attempts one of them being the game-winner. Kickers miss kicks all the time, it happens, but to draft Moody in the third round after having Robbie Gould still on the team shows the problem. This team is in win-now mode, having a young kicker who has now shown he can miss important kicks after being ice’d is a no-go. They should’ve rode it out with Robbie, if they did maybe they’d still be undefeated.

The Niners got very unlucky today. They fired up the no. 1 defense in the league before the game even started. They hit harder and played with fire up their behind the whole game, and the Niners weren’t ready for it. If you're going to upset the opposition, you better be ready for their response. The Niners will still be a massive Super Bowl favorite, but they need to make sure they can remain healthy and keep a target off their back. If that target stays on them, they need to come in every week ready to give it everything. If they don’t I fear a lot worse can happen.