SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The San Francisco 49ers entered last week's game as a team with a serious stagger.
Their defense is ravaged by injuries, their quarterback was coming off one of the worst performances of his career that was ended by getting benched at halftime and the offensive line and had been pushed around to the tune of 10 sacks allowed over two weeks.
So what changed for quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and San Francisco's offense Week 6 against the Rams?
"It just kinda felt like the huddle on Sunday night just had this one heartbeat to it," star tight end George Kittle said on the Candlestick Chronicles podcast this week. "Everyone was locked in."
If the 49ers are going to make a playoff run in 2020, beating L.A. is shaping up to be a turning point. The gap between 2-4 and 3-3 is the delta between staying in the postseason mix the rest of the year and a fan base hoping the team would start losing every game to get the best draft pick possible.
San Francisco rebounded from the bad start to the season by getting back to its roots of running the ball, testing the defense horizontally and getting the ball out of Jimmy Garoppolo's hands quickly. It led to a game that looked a lot more like the team that went 13-3 in 2019 and played in the Super Bowl. Not like a bumbling team that would lose to sizable underdogs and begin a season 0-3 on its home field.
Perhaps that feeling the 49ers players had Sunday night can be channeled again into more wins as the schedule toughens, starting with road games against New England and Seattle followed by a Thursday night home game against the Packers and a trip back to New Orleans.
