Shanahan's Explanation For the 49ers' Last Second Loss to Green Bay

The 49ers' 30-28 loss to the Green Bay Packers was so painful because it was so preventable.

The 49ers gave the Packers the ball with 37 seconds left in the game. The Packers needed to drive only 40 yards to get into field goal range, and 37 seconds to go 40 yards is plenty of time, even if the offense has no timeouts.

The 49ers needed to find a way to shave a few seconds off the clock. They could have wasted some time before snapping the ball on their final offensive play -- they snapped it with 12 seconds left on the play clock. They could have taken another 9 seconds off it by simply standing still.

Then Kyle Juszczyk could have gone down at the two-yard line rather than diving into the end zone. Remember, the 49ers had all three of their timeouts.

Here's what head coach Kyle Shanahan said Monday on conference call about the way the final minute of the game unfolded.

SHANAHAN: "We wanted to run it down. No one wants to give it back to Aaron Rodgers. We're also not going to tell Juszczyk to not try to score. You try to dictate that with some play calling. We had a choice route called, which is a five yard in route or out route based off leverage by Mohamed Sanu, and if he's not open, you're just going to hit Juszczyk on the check down. Usually check downs at best are about a five-yard gain, but Juszczyk ran a hell of a check down and then ran over two people to score.

"We had three timeouts, but I'm not telling Jimmy to run it down yet. You want to get under 30 seconds and inside the 10 yard line. Then you can control it with your three timeouts. But the only other option would have been to tell Juszczyk not to score, which is something you wouldn't do. It took us seven plays in the second quarter to score from inside the 11, and five plays from the 1 to score. So you want to make sure that you get those plays, but we were definitely weren't expecting to score on that play."