There were bright spots Sunday, most of them provided by what remains one of the star-richest offense in football. George Kittle looked back as hell, ripping down a season-high 98 yards worth of contested catches and notching his first touchdown of the year. Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk combined for 124 more, on varieties of lightning strike. Christian McCaffrey, the All-Pro and hope-laden running back for whom the San Francisco 49ers sent away four draft picks on Thursday, had less than 72 hours to get what grip he could on Kyle Shanahan’s playbook, but on 10 touches he flashed the tight-corners wiggle and open-field verve that explain the price tag.<\/p>\n
For all that collected talent, the Niners sit at 3-4 \u2013 averaging just 20 points a game \u2013 after getting smoked 44-23 by the Chiefs. The backs and receivers look like so many Ferraris lugging U-Hauls, like Sisyphi pushing stones. The poor dudes are living football purgatory: They’re playing (again) with Jimmy Garoppolo.<\/p>\n
If Sunday’s final score overstates Kansas City’s dominance \u2013 Kittle’s touchdown whittled the deficit to five at the start of the fourth quarter \u2013 it also understates the deficiencies of the Niners’ quarterback. Garoppolo passed for 303 yards and tallied two touchdowns against one interception, numbers that don’t do justice to an afternoon spent letting go of the ball in a panic or holding onto it in a daze. San Francisco’s first five trips inside the Chiefs’ 30-yard line yielded just one touchdown. The pick, a five-yard lollipop nominally to wide receiver Ray-Ray McCloud and actually to cornerback Joshua Williams, came when a backpedaling Garoppolo missed Jeff Wilson running free for the goal line. A fourth-quarter safety resulted from two consecutive sacks, the first occurring when Garoppolo stepped up into the closing doors of 600 pounds of defensive linemen, the latter when he bet<\/a> that he could outrun Frank Clark.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n