The 49ers melted down in the second half again on Sunday, allowing the Cardinals to outscore them 17-0 on the way to a 23-14 loss that left San Francisco with a 1-2 record after three weeks.
The team has now been outscored 52-3 in the second halves of games this season, a problem that needs to be addressed if they are going to turn things around and return to the playoffs. One good place to start would be penalties, which played a major role in both of their losses.
One of the costliest on Sunday was a head butt delivered by wide receiver Anquan Boldin to Cardinals cornerback Tony Jefferson late in the third quarter that took the Niners from first-and-goal on the six to first-and-10 on the 21-yard line. They had to settle for a field goal try, which was blocked, and the Niners wouldn’t come close to scoring again. Boldin acknowledged his error after the game, but said it came after officials missed several infractions by the Cardinals before throwing flags on his side.
“For me, it’s been obvious the last two weeks: The amount of calls that have gone against us and the amount of calls that we’ve gotten hasn’t been close,” Boldin said, via the Sacramento Bee. “Every week, it’s the same thing -- send the tape in, the NFL just reports back, ‘We made a mistake.’ But at the same time, the crap cost us another game. At some point, they need to be held accountable.”
On some calls, like the one on linebacker Patrick Willis for an unambiguously clean hit on Drew Stanton, Boldin is absolutely right about the officials making blunders that need to be corrected on the field and not during the week. On others, though, the 49ers have only themselves to blame. Whether it was Boldin’s head butt or Chris Culliver’s taunting wiping out a Cardinals holding penalty, the 49ers’ inability to keep their emotions under wraps was their fault alone.
Those latter issues are the only penalty-related ones that the 49ers can control by themselves and they’ll need to against the Eagles in Week Four if they want to avoid another disappointing result.
