Penalties, mistakes, and miscues have been the theme for the 49ers this season
The San Francisco 49ers used an abysmal Week 15 performance against the Los Angeles Rams to put their season on life support. While things weren’t looking good, that plug officially got pulled as the 49ers took the field for their Week 16 game against the Miami Dolphins.
This series was supposed to be a lesson guide for how the 49ers would navigate the postseason, but now, with three games left, it’s been demoted to an offseason preview for any insight into what the 2025 49ers could look like.
With the change of philosophy for this series, let’s look at what we learned from the loss to the Dolphins, starting with the biggest fix needed over the upcoming offseason – the offensive line:
The 49ers are incapable of playing a clean game
And it’s why they are at 6-9 instead of planning a trip to the postseason, as many predicted back in September. Sunday in Miami was no different as the 49ers struggled their way through a 29-17 loss at the hands of the Dolphins.
The offensive line was the most prominent cause of preventing the Niners from that elusive clean game on Sunday. Injuries didn’t help the position group much, but Miami’s front seven gave the 49ers front issues in both the run and pass game.
The 49ers aren’t going to win too many games where Brock Purdy is the team’s leading rusher, and that was proven on Sunday. With all of the injuries in the backfield, the Niners started Patrick Taylor at running back, but he could only muster 24 yards on eight attempts. The lack of depth saw Deebo Samuel get five carries for the second time in three weeks after not getting more than five rush attempts for two months, but even with a 13-yard run, the receiver ran for only 25 yards on five attempts.
Those rushing totals from Samuel and Taylor opened the door for Purdy, who used his legs to avoid the pass rush for 26 yards on four attempts. With no rushing attack to be spoken for, it opened the door for Miami to pin its ears back on the pass and get to Purdy.
The Dolphins would not miss that opportunity.
For the second game in a row, Purdy was sacked three times while being under pressure on plenty of his dropbacks. After allowing 19 pressures against the Rams in Week 15, the 49ers allowed 16 pressures on Sunday. Center Jake Brendel was responsible for a quarter of those pressures, allowing the Miami pass rush to stunt their way into Purdy’s throwing space.
But Brendel was far from the only issue on the line. The 49ers had seven players play on the offensive line on Sunday because of various injuries, and all except Aaron Banks allowed both a pressure and hurry of Purdy. The constant pressure affected the quarterback, who could only complete four of 11 passes on 17 dropbacks under pressure for 42 yards and an interception. The lone interception was the killer.
With a chance to take a late lead, Purdy threw his second fourth-quarter interception on a drive where the 49ers could have taken the lead in as many weeks, but the blame for this misfire could be placed on the offensive line. Miami ran a stunt – something the 49ers offensive line has struggled with all season – giving Calais Campbell a free run at Purdy, making the quarterback force a pass to Jauan Jennings. Still, the ball didn’t have enough on it to get to the intended target, and Kader Kohou intercepted it to put the game away.
Other themes that prevented the 49ers from that complete game were penalties, special teams, and a lack of a pass rush, to name a few, but none were more constant than the offensive line woes. It wasn’t Purdy’s best game either, as he again had some accuracy issues, but the line issues made it so the quarterback wasn’t too comfortable any of the 46 times he dropped back.
With the Niners missing the playoffs, the offensive line is a position group that will need a closer look over the offseason and going forward. Under Shanahan and Lynch, the offensive front hasn’t been a priority in recent years, but Sunday is the latest evidence that it needs to be higher on the wishlist after this season.