The 49ers have played some good football this season.
The 49ers have played some bad football this season.
But Sunday was something else entirely: The 49ers played so poorly against the Houston Texans that it makes you question if they can ever win again.
Their performance in a 29-15 loss was, in a word, awful.
Or, if you need another word, you can go with terrible. Or dreadful, Or abysmal.
And if you’re someone who lives and dies with the Niners’ play, it was likely depressing.
Toss whatever word you want on it, but the Niners’ performance was so bad, their coach had to use the nuclear option:
He had to tell the truth in his post-game press conference.
“They kicked our ass,” Kyle Shanahan said. “There’s not much to sugarcoat. The first half was unacceptable. [The] Second half, it didn’t get much better.”
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What’s the lesson here for the Niners, who (I’m pretty sure) will win another game this season?
It’s so simplistic it will come across as trite: you need good players to win in the NFL.
There was a point where the Niners had those good players. Most of them are now injured. A new batch — Dee Winters, Sam Okuayinonu — joined the list of the infirm on Sunday.
The Niners entered the season with little idea of their roster. They have far less of an idea today.
What is this team now?
Overmatched?
Call them the 39ers — they’re at least 10 players short of a championship roster.
And on Sunday, they provided minimal interference to the Texans’ best-case scenario.
For weeks, Shanahan and his staff have been pulling off a high-wire act, using elite schemes and clever coaching to mask the deficiencies of third-stringers and street free agents. They’ve been putting on a master class in coaching up a roster that should be .500 at best.
But Sunday? The whole operation swerved off the road and straight into a ditch. Shanahan and defensive coordinator Robert Saleh couldn’t trick the Texans. They couldn’t bludgeon them, either. They had to go toe-to-toe, and the Texans — even at two wins in seven games — were multiple weight classes above them.
A few important things to note:
• The Texans didn’t punt until there was 4:15 remaining in the fourth quarter.
• The Texans took a 13-7 lead in the first quarter. That was 13 points to the 49ers’ 7 offensive plays (no points.)
• The Texans doubled the Niners’ offensive output (475 yards of total offense to 223.)
• The Texans didn’t even play that well.
What went wrong for the Niners?
“A little bit of everything,” Shanahan said.
But other than that, Kyle, how was the game?
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The good news here is that there’s no mutiny on deck in Santa Clara. The Niners were playing with something resembling house money after a 5-2 start to the season. They can afford a dud or two.
Beyond that, real professionals don’t point fingers at others; they take the blame themselves. And in a game like Sunday’s, where there’s nothing but blame to go around, that’s exactly what will happen. The offense will blame itself. The defense will blame itself. Special teams will try to get in on the act, even though it was pretty good in Houston.
But the Niners should be careful with the self-flagellation — they don’t need anyone else injured.
Some players will return in the days and weeks to come. Brock Purdy’s return seems close and, after Mac Jones’ woeful performance Sunday, is legitimately anticipated. Ricky Pearsall and Brandon Aiyuk might return to the receiving corps as well. (Though I’m not holding my breath on either.) Perhaps the oft-injured but legitimately impactful Yetur Gross-Matos can invigorate the Niners’ stagnant and third-rate defensive line, which did nothing to make Texans quarterback CJ Stroud’s life hard Sunday. (He was doing yoga — the relaxing type! — on the sideline in the fourth quarter.)
Or maybe whatever curse has been placed on this team continues to bring season-changing injuries.
Around the 49ers locker room, players had been calling the 2025 season a “bizarro 2024.” The constant, nearly vindictive string of injuries was the same as last year’s six-win fiasco, but the results were the exact opposite.
What no one wanted to publicly process was the possibility that San Francisco, with great coaching and opportunistic play, was just fending off the inevitable — that the bill would come due.
The Niners still control their own destiny. They earned that right with their improbable but irrevocable start to the season.
But that bill? Perhaps it’s finally here.
And how the Niners respond to this whooping will tell us if this season is, in fact, any different.
