Sports
49ers-Bills: Josh Allen leads Buffalo’s burial of San Francisco in snowstorm as Bills clinch AFC East with 35-10 win
The San Francisco 49ers looked like a California team playing in the snow. They were slipping around. No catch was a given. No common football act came easy.
And it would be easy to write that off if the 49ers looked anything like their normal selves this season. Instead, the 49ers sunk even deeper in the standings, their playoff hopes likely being buried in the Buffalo snow.
The Buffalo Bills are a Super Bowl contender and the 49ers somehow probably aren’t even a playoff team. That’s how Sunday night’s game played out, with the Bills cruising to an easy 35-14 win in snowy conditions. Buffalo clinched the AFC East title with the victory.
The 49ers fell to 5-7, and star running back Christian McCaffrey left the game with a non-contact knee injury.
The 49ers took last season’s Super Bowl to overtime and brought practically their whole roster back. There have been injuries, which haven’t helped. But when this miserable season is over, and finished much sooner than anyone expected, San Francisco must examine exactly what went so wrong. There’s going to be a lot to sort out.
49ers get embarrassed again
Snow games provide a fun setting, and often very sloppy play. The 49ers were a comedy on Sunday night. Sure-handed players like George Kittle dropped easy passes. Reliable fullback Kyle Juszczyk fumbled right before crossing the goal line when the ball was punched out, and Brock Purdy lost a fumble when he went to pass and the ball simply fell out of his hands.
The 49ers’ defense looked slow as it tried to chase James Cook on the Buffalo running back’s 65-yard touchdown. They looked foolish when Amari Cooper lateraled to Josh Allen for a 9-yard touchdown to put the Bills ahead 28-3. Officially, Allen got a touchdown pass and a touchdown reception on the play. According to NBC, Allen became the fourth player in NFL history to get a receiving touchdown on a pass he threw.
The 49ers got embarrassed last week 38-10 in Green Bay and they were down 21-3 at halftime on Sunday night. Early this season the 49ers lost some close games that put them in an unexpected hole. With the season in the balance the past two weeks, they haven’t even been competitive.
The McCaffrey injury is another setback. McCaffrey missed the first eight games of the season with an Achilles injury. He returned and in his fourth game back he started limping right after taking a pitch and fell to the ground. He got up and ran awkwardly to the sideline and never returned. If he misses time, it makes life even harder for a 49ers offense that has been stuck lately.
Brandon Aiyuk suffered a season-ending ACL injury weeks ago. Stalwarts Nick Bosa and Trent Williams were among the players out for the 49ers on Sunday night. Fred Warner has been playing through a fractured ankle and fellow linebacker Dre Greenlaw hasn’t played at all this season.
Injuries have been a problem, but many of the players who have been on the field haven’t played to their normal level. In many ways, the 49ers look exactly like a 5-7 team.
Bills look good again
Just because Bills players live in Buffalo doesn’t mean they’re accustomed to playing football with inches of snow on the ground. They just handled the conditions much better than the 49ers.
Allen made some key plays, including his touchdown pass that was officially to himself and an 8-yard touchdown run that put Buffalo up 35-10. Allen was lifted from the game with more than 12 minutes to go, with the outcome decided.
The Bills are still chasing the No. 1 seed in the AFC, hoping for the Kansas City Chiefs to finally lose a close game. They look like a complete team capable of winning it all and have the 10-2 record to show for it. That’s what the 49ers were expected to be.
The 49ers aren’t completely finished but might need to win out or close to make the playoffs. It’s December and San Francisco is in last place of the NFC West. It won’t get easier going forward with some of their core either approaching 30 years old or already in their 30s, and Purdy soon to get a lucrative extension that will change their salary-cap situation.
The last two games might have ended the 49ers’ playoff hopes for this season, and perhaps will be looked at as the last gasp of what looked like a championship run in San Francisco. Nobody anticipated the 49ers playing meaningless football this December and early January. But after two straight blowout losses, the 49ers look like they’ll be irrelevant the rest of the season.
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