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Did the 49ers Become Overconfident After Blowing Out Dallas?

Since the 49ers blew out Dallas, they lost to P.J. Walker and the Browns and still haven't recovered. Did they overlook their past few opponents? Did they get too confident?
Grant Cohn|
Did the 49ers Become Overconfident After Blowing Out Dallas?
Did the 49ers Become Overconfident After Blowing Out Dallas?

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San Francisco 49ers

SANTA CLARA -- Just a few weeks ago, the 49ers blew out the Cowboys by 32 points. Then afterward, they talked about creating a standard of excellence. 

That standard lasted one game. Since the 49ers blew out Dallas, they lost to P.J. Walker and the Browns and still haven't recovered. Did they overlook their past few opponents? Did they get too confident?

I asked George Kittle that question about the 49ers loss to the Bengals. Here's what he said:

ME: Did this team get overconfident after beating Dallas by 32?

KITTLE: "No, I don’t think it’s a confidence thing. I wouldn’t say overconfident, we should be confident because of the players and the staff we have. I’m not worried about that, you look at Cleveland. We had fifteen penalties? You can’t win a football game with fifteen penalties and multiple turnovers. We had a chance to win at the end, we just didn’t. I don’t think it’s an overconfidence thing."

ME: "Is it the mindset? Has the focus shifted?"

KITTLE: "Grant, I can’t give an answer on why we’re losing besides turnovers. I don’t think we’re running the ball enough and situationally. I don’t think we can run the ball because of the situation we’re putting ourselves in. We have an offense with explosive players all over the football field. We can win these games and we had an opportunity down there when it was seventeen to ten and we had a turnover. Turnovers really hurt you and it’s hard to win football games when you have three turnovers."

GRANT'S TAKE: Kittle isn't blaming the team's mindset for the three-game losing streak -- he's blaming Brock Purdy. Because he's the one who has committed the turnovers. When Kittle says, "It's hard to win football games when you have three turnovers," what he really means is, "It's hard to win football games when the quarterback commits three turnovers."

It seems to me the leaders on the 49ers are losing confidence in their young quarterback.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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