49ers' answers to summer of distractions? Crush foes, shed a layer, stay fuego

The 49ers completed their tutorial on how to survive the weirdest summer in franchise history, a 16,000-mile opening road trip and a follow-up trap game. On Sunday, they squashed the hapless Miami Dolphins 35-13 at a lightly-attended Levi’s Stadium. They have controlled what they can control, shut out the rest of the noise and emerged victorious.

“That was why I was real proud of the guys,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “That was the biggest challenge, the human nature of it. The travel, coming back after five days off, the distractions of being at home. … That’s what I was worried about.

“But we’ve got a really cool team in terms of how much guys care about football. That’s who they are.”

It’s only Week 2. And it was only the Dolphins. But the 49ers appear to be a “really cool team” that also might be really good. While teams around the NFL are imploding, the 49ers are one of just seven undefeated teams in the league and had to literally take the hardest road to get there.

Having beaten the Rams both physically and mentally in Week 1, a letdown against one of the worst teams in the league was quite possible.  

“There was talk about not letting it be a trap game,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “But it’s the NFL. You’ve got to show up with your best foot forward every single week. The goal this week was to go one-and-oh and we did just that.  So we’ve got to correct the tape hard and get ready for a divisional opponent.”

The 49ers next face Arizona, which got smoked by Seattle. Then Denver, which hasn’t looked good. The Washington Commanders, who may have just lost their starting quarterback, are on the schedule in Week 6. The 49ers aren’t peeking ahead, but if you choose to, you could see a potential 5-1 start to the season, with the Seahawks (Week 5 in Seattle) being the biggest problem.

Such a fast start wouldn’t have been the popular prediction a few weeks ago, not after a summer of turmoil, in which the head coach was severely injured in a car accident and wasn’t fully available to start training camp, and the team owner was arrested in an embarrassing prostitution sting in an Ohio trailer park just two weeks before the opening game.

Jed York was not at Sunday’s game but his presence was felt thanks to an early morning story posted by ESPN’s Adam Schefter that “sources” said York would not be at the home opener in order not to be a distraction to the team, even though leaking such a story could be a distraction from the team’s home opener. Schefter, who has a close relationship with York, also reported from “sources” that York was in Australia. The Mercury News reported last week that York was in Sydney, not Melbourne, which is – to say the least – odd, but may involve family dynamics. York is in the midst of a divorce and relocated to Ohio earlier this year.

The NFL, according to ESPN, should make a decision “soon” on York’s status. It is expected that he will be both fined and also suspended from the team. Four weeks have passed since York was arrested for soliciting a prostitute, spent a night in jail and pleaded to a misdemeanor but the NFL apparently moves quite slowly when it comes to punishing owners. Will league discipline prevent York from continuing to pour money into Santa Clara local politics in an effort to elect pro-49ers candidates on Nov. 3 who serve the interests of the team rather than the city? Unlikely.

None of the weirdness surrounding the organization seems to have affected the team on the field. Nor did an unwanted trip to Australia that the 49ers fully embraced, while the host Rams rebuffed the international game (and continue to talk about how miserable it was).

“From the get-go we knew the reason we went early to Australia was to get ready for the game,” quarterback Brock Purdy said. “And on the way back, to still be on top of our recovery. I think everyone felt great towards the middle of (last) week. So it all worked out great.”

It worked out great for Purdy, who had a magnificent game, directing five touchdown drives, leading the team in rushing with a couple of nifty scrambles, completing 18 passes in a row at one point and finishing with a near perfect quarterback rating of 149.1.

“The game is so slow to him right now,” Warner said. 

Though the outcome was never in doubt, the game was far from perfect. The 49ers continue to have a leaky run defense – Miami rushed for 102 yards and sustained drives to the point that the 49ers only had two possessions in the first half. The Dolphins’ relative success leads to the question of why the Rams, who ran the ball effectively against the 49ers early in Week 1, abandoned their run game early.

The 49ers also have an injury problem, specifically a receiver injury problem.  In the second quarter, Demarcus Robinson hopped off the field, went into the blue tent and was then carted off the field with an ankle injury. Later in the game, Mike Evans went out with a hip injury. While Shanahan believes Evans’ injury is not serious, he was more concerned about Robinson.

Shanahan said the team would look into adding a receiver. When asked if it could be estranged 49er Brandon Aiyuk, another key actor of the summer of weirdness, Shanahan chuckled slightly and said, quite definitively: “No.”

The 49ers might have drama all around them but they’re not looking for more drama in their locker room. So far, things are going smoothly. In fact the only misstep of the day came when Shanahan ran out onto the field during player introductions and immediately made a U-turn and ran back into the locker room.

Was he ill? Had he forgotten his play sheet? Had jet lag caught up with him?

“I had too many shirts on underneath,” Shanahan said. “I thought it was a little colder out, it was cloudy, but I came out and it felt muggy.

“I’ve got a little OCD in me and I don’t want to fidget and think about it all game, so I ran back in and took a layer off.”

Control the controllables. Whether it’s adjusting to Australia time, avoiding a trap-game letdown or making sure you’re attired correctly on the sideline.

For the first two weeks of the season, the 49ers have been fully in control.

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This article originally published at 49ers’ answers to summer of distractions? Crush foes, shed a layer, stay fuego.