The 49ers have played some good football this season.<\/p>\n
The 49ers have played some bad football this season.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Their performance in a 26-15 loss was, in a word, awful.<\/p>\n
Or, if you need another word, you can go with terrible. Or dreadful. Or abysmal.<\/p>\n
And if you\u2019re someone who lives and dies with the Niners\u2019 play, it was likely depressing.<\/p>\n
Toss whatever word you want on it, but the Niners\u2019 performance was so bad, their coach had to use the nuclear option:<\/p>\n
He had to tell the truth in his post-game news conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey kicked our ass,\u201d Kyle Shanahan said. \u201cThere\u2019s not much to sugarcoat. The first half was unacceptable. (The) second half, it didn\u2019t get much better.\u201d<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the lesson here for the Niners, who (I\u2019m pretty sure) will win another game this season?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s so simplistic it will come across as trite: You need good players to win in the NFL.<\/p>\n
There was a point where the Niners had those good players. Most of them are now injured. A new batch \u2014 Dee Winters, Sam Okuayinonu \u2014 joined the list of the infirm Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Niners entered the season with little idea of their roster. They have far less of an idea today.<\/p>\n
What is this team now?<\/p>\n
Overmatched?<\/p>\n
Call them the 39ers \u2014 they\u2019re at least 10 players short of a championship roster.<\/p>\n
And on Sunday, they provided minimal interference to the Texans\u2019 best-case scenario.<\/p>\n
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\u2019ve been putting on a master class in coaching up a roster that should be .500 at best.<\/p>\n
But Sunday? The whole operation swerved off the road and straight into a ditch. Shanahan and defensive coordinator Robert Saleh couldn\u2019t trick the Texans. They couldn\u2019t bludgeon them, either. They had to go toe-to-toe, and the Texans \u2014 even at two wins in seven games \u2014 were multiple weight classes above them.<\/p>\n
A few important things to note:<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Texans didn\u2019t punt until there was 4:15 remaining in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Texans took a 13-0 lead in the first quarter. That was 13 points to the 49ers\u2019 7 offensive plays (no points.)<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Texans doubled the Niners\u2019 offensive output (475 yards of total offense to 223).<\/p>\n
\u2022 The Texans didn\u2019t even play that well.<\/p>\n
What went wrong for the Niners?<\/p>\n
\u201cA little bit of everything,\u201d Shanahan said.<\/p>\n
But other than that, Kyle, how was the game?<\/p>\n
The good news here is that there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, real professionals don\u2019t point fingers at others; they take the blame themselves. And in a game like Sunday\u2019s, where there\u2019s nothing but blame to go around, that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
But the Niners should be careful with the self-flagellation \u2014 they don\u2019t need anyone else injured.<\/p>\n
Some players will return in the days and weeks to come. Brock Purdy\u2019s return seems close and, after Mac Jones\u2019 woeful performance Sunday, is legitimately anticipated. Ricky Pearsall and Brandon Aiyuk might return to the receiving corps as well. (Though I\u2019m not holding my breath on either.) Perhaps the oft-injured but legitimately impactful Yetur Gross-Matos can invigorate the Niners\u2019 stagnant and third-rate defensive line, which did nothing to make Texans quarterback CJ Stroud\u2019s life hard Sunday. (He was doing yoga \u2014 the relaxing type! \u2014 on the sideline in the fourth quarter.)<\/p>\n
Or maybe whatever curse has been placed on this team continues to bring season-changing injuries.<\/p>\n
Around the 49ers locker room, players had been calling the 2025 season a \u201cbizarro 2024.\u201d The constant, nearly vindictive string of injuries was the same as last year\u2019s six-win fiasco, but the results were the exact opposite.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 that the bill would come due.<\/p>\n
The Niners still control their own destiny. They earned that right with their improbable but irrevocable start to the season.<\/p>\n
But that bill? Perhaps it\u2019s finally here.<\/p>\n
And how the Niners respond to this whooping will tell us if this season is, in fact, any different.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: October 26, 2025 at 3:00 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 49ers have played some good football this season. The 49ers have played some bad football this season.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":334867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5130],"tags":[4345,1362,165780,1370,1232,9005,62,2632,358,3187],"class_list":{"0":"post-334866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-houston","9":"tag-inside-sports","10":"tag-inside-the-san-francisco-49ers","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-sports-columnists","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-tx"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115443102172803849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}