Kyle Shanahan blunders and controversial penalty call cost 49ers against Browns
Sunday's matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Cleveland Browns looked to be one of the biggest potential mismatches on paper on the entire Week 6 schedule.
The 49ers were huge road favorites against a Browns team starting a third-string quarterback (P.J. Walker) and still without its best offensive player in running back Nick Chubb.
The bad news for the 49ers is that games are not played on paper, as they were on the losing end of a 19-17 decision to take their first loss of the season.
There were many reasons for that result, but the two biggest were a controversial penalty on San Francisco in the fourth quarter and some atrocious decision-making by head coach Kyle Shanahan.
Let's start with the penalty.
With Cleveland facing a key third-and-10 situation late in the fourth quarter, the Browns were given an automatic first down thanks to a personal penalty on Tashaun Gipson for hitting a defenseless wide receiver.
It was a controversial call because it was not egregiously late and the replay angles show that he led with his shoulder and made shoulder-to-shoulder contact.
Even Fox officiating expert Dean Blandino felt it should not have been called.
Instead of facing a fourth-and-10, the Browns got a huge gain to keep their drive alive and eventually get into field goal range for the go-ahead kick.
While that penalty was significant, it does not absolve the 49ers — and specifically Shanahan — of blame.
Shanahan's first mistake came just prior to Cleveland's go-ahead field goal drive, when the 49ers took over on their own 25-yard line with the lead and only 3:21 to play in regulation. It would have been an optimal time to run the ball and either burn off clock or at least force Cleveland to use its two timeouts.
Instead, Shanahan called three consecutive passing plays, two of which resulted in incompletions (including one which drew a intentional grounding penalty) and one completion that went out of bounds. The 49ers took just 25 seconds off the clock, did not gain any yards and did not force Cleveland to burn a timeout.
It was a brutal series, magnified by the fact that at that point of the game, Brock Purdy had completed just 1-of-5 passes for five yards in the second half.
It would not be Shanahan's final big mistake. After falling behind, the 49ers actually got themselves into Jake Moody's field-goal range and had a first down at the Cleveland 24-yard with one timeout and 40 seconds to play.
Instead of trying to run another play or two get closer, Shanahan elected to run the clock down to eight seconds and spike the ball to set up a 41-yard kick. While that is well within Moody's range, the weather conditions were less-than-ideal and Moody ended up shanking the kick (his second miss of the game).
The penalty was bad. The 49ers offense was overwhelmed by the Browns defense all day. But Shanahan repeatedly failed to put his team into the best position to win late in the game.
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