Who Spikes blames for 49ers’ last-second loss to Packers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
It didn’t end the way the 49ers or anyone expected it to on Sunday when the Green Bay Packers won, 30-28, at Levi’s Stadium.
Mitch Wishnowsky’s resulting kick off after the 49ers took the lead in the fourth quarter, resulted in a touchback and the rest was history.
So whose fault was it? NBC Sports Bay Area’s Takeo Spikes has his thoughts. Was it the play calling? The players themselves?
“I personally didn’t have a problem with the call, especially on the last drive of the game,” Spikes said. “Green Bay, 30-plus seconds left, no timeouts, they had to get into field goal position. What I did have a problem with was the player’s depth. In particular, when we’re talking about the secondary — the middle interior guys.”
Spikes said that was the issue pre-snap and he would have liked to see the linebackers handle their positioning better.
“You have to get depth because knowing you’re going to keep everything in front of you, they don’t have any timeouts, you can fall on them and run the time out,” Spikes said.
49ers special teams coordinator, Richard Hightower explained why the team kicked the ball out of bounds instead of potentially taking more time off the clock.
“At the end of the game, we have a lot of respect for [Green Bay Packers RB Kylin] Hill,” Hightower told 49ers media on Wednesday. “He had a 41-yard, big return, explosive return the week before where he got those guys to like the 50-yard line or something like that, or somewhere it was half a field [Green Bay Packers quarterbac] Aaron [Rodgers] had to work with and they went down there and scored. So thought process on that is basically we’ve got a lot of respect for the guy and make them go longer than they have to there.”
Spikes referred to what 49ers’ safety Jimmie Ward said, claiming that the call was great, but it wasn’t executed well.
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“When you have your leaders coming out saying things like this, they are this close from figuring it out, but it’s attention to detail,” Spikes said.
Read more: https://sports.yahoo.com/takeo-spikes-blames-49ers-last-030656519.html?src=rss
