INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The NFL is big business — a multi-billion dollar enterprise. And in big business, it’s not the smartest or the richest or the oldest that wins. It’s the most aggressive.
The 49ers need to take note before it’s too late and their Super Bowl window closes.
On Sunday — and in the weeks and months leading up to the NFC Championship Game — aggressiveness was the difference between the Rams going to the Super Bowl and the 49ers watching it at home like the rest of us.
There were little things that played out in Sunday’s contest — moments of passiveness — that snowballed into something larger.
There were also macro trends at play — bigger-picture lessons to be learned.
Ultimately in life, it’s not about what happens, it’s how you respond.
How the 49ers respond to Sunday’s loss will determine if they will be the NFC’s team to beat for years to come or if they’ll be also-rans in a conference that has plenty of them.
Let’s start with the small stuff — the stuff that’s been nagging you and me since Sunday evening.
Niners coach Kyle Shanahan has struggled with game management his entire career. I argued a few weeks ago that he might be cursed — he can’t ever seem to get things right when it comes to late-game scenarios in big contests.
Of course, much of that has to do with his quarterback, but that column has already been filed.
But Jimmy Garoppolo didn’t start Sunday’s game by surprise — Shanahan knows full well what his quarterback can and cannot do.
In some situations, he gave him full trust. Shanahan aptly tried to throw the ball late in the game against a Rams defense that had gone all-in to stop the 49ers’ run game.
But in other critical situations in the contest, Shanahan was timid and unwilling to give Garoppolo a chance to make plays.
You can’t have it both ways.
The first key instance of passiveness was in the second quarter. The 49ers had the ball at the Los Angeles 24 yard line with 21 seconds to play tied at 7-7. Garoppolo had just spiked the ball, leaving San Francisco one timeout remaining, as they had just wasted one a moment before in a bad coaching decision.
Close to the end zone with plenty of time remaining, it was a great opportunity to take a shot, or two, or three. With San Francisco receiving the second-half kickoff, the possibility for a game-changing, half-wrapping 14-0 run was there.
Instead, Garoppolo made an ill-advised decision to scramble for four yards, and Shanahan compounded the mistake by deciding to let the clock nearly expire before stopping to set up a Robbie Gould field goal.
Perhaps the half would have always ended with a Gould field goal, but the lack of aggression denied the Niners the possibility of four points. It also proved prescient on how the rest of the game would be played.
With roughly 10 minutes to play — directly preceding Jaquiski Tartt’s dropped interception — Shanahan decided to punt from the Los Angeles 45 yard line, despite having only a three-point lead, despite having a short two yards to convert, and despite the fact that he put his offense on the field after Rams coach Sean McVay’s terrible challenge decision from the play before.
Shanahan said after the game that he never considered going for it on fourth down.
If that’s truly the case, then the disease of passiveness is going to take a long time to eradicate in Santa Clara.
The Rams, of course, turned their subsequent possession into a tied game. Their next field goal ended up winning the game because of the Niners’ offensive implosion the last two times they had the ball in the game.
Such passive calls have become par for the course with Shanahan, and it’s seeped into the offseason as well.
The Rams quarterback Sunday was Matthew Stafford, whom they acquired from the Lions this past offseason in a blockbuster deal.
But Stafford was supposed to be the 49ers’ quarterback.
Kyle Shanahan was in Cabo, studying Stafford and working on a trade for the former No. 1 overall pick. He went out for dinner one night under the impression the 49ers and Rams would finalize a deal the next morning.
Stafford was in Cabo, too.
And so was McVay.
I don’t think those latter two points are much of a coincidence.
McVay knew the 49ers were circling — doing due diligence — and he swooped in. He beat them to the punch to get the quarterback at the 11th hour.
He was aggressive — he put his owner on the spot over the phone, effectively calling the Stafford decision a do-or-die moment.
The Rams chose to do it. While Shanahan and the Niners were passive, LA was aggressive. And on Sunday, Stafford was levels better than Garoppolo in the clutch.
Having failed to land Stafford, the 49ers went big and traded for the No. 3 overall pick in the April NFL Draft. Shanahan picked up what was being laid down.
But even then, he couldn’t finish the job — he couldn’t actually be aggressive.
Instead of making Lance his Day 1 starter, he opted to keep Garoppolo and prolong the inevitable. He chose to play a lame-duck season with Jimmy G because that was the “safe” option.
You can see that decision as validated by the Niners’ playoff run. I look at Garoppolo’s play in the final weeks and postseason and wonder if a young quarterback couldn’t have reached that point after 16-or-so games inside Shanahan’s quarterback-friendly system.
Either way, the decision to go with Garoppolo gave this Niners season a clear ceiling.
Sunday, they bumped up against it.
A bit more aggression and they might have cracked it. Had Shanahan won in the margins, he might have been able to overcome Garoppolo’s limitations as a game manager.
A bit more aggression and they might have had the far better quarterback Sunday, either in the form of Lance, Stafford, or a mystery man.
A bit more aggression and the Niners could well be in the Super Bowl.
But that’s not the way Shanahan goes about his business.
And so long as that remains the case, the 49ers won’t win the big game.
