San Francisco 49ers: Notes from Week 3 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers

The San Francisco 49ers are off to a hot start as they head into the bye week. The Pittsburgh Steelers were a test for them, but the team ultimately prevailed.

After five turnovers, three of which came in the red zone, the San Francisco 49ers were able to hang on to defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers 24-20 and move to 3-0 on the season.

The 49ers haven’t started 3-0 since 1998, a season in which they went 12-4 and tied for the third-best record in the NFL.

Things are looking promising for this young 49ers team as they head into the bye week. Two road wins out east and a sloppy home opener that resulted in a win nonetheless.

The defense is tied for second in takeaways and second overall in total yards/yards per game allowed while the offense is fourth overall in those two latter categories as well as rushing yards/rushing yards per game.

So far, so good from this team that had a lot of questions to be answered coming into the season.

But getting back to the Steelers contest itself, how in the world did the 49ers win this game? After all, young teams that turn the ball over five times in a game almost always wind up losing.

Where the 49ers ultimately won this game was in time of possession, which reflects favorably on the defense for creating shorter Steelers drives.

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36 minutes to 23 minutes was the final tally on time of possession that the 49erswon. In that extra time (over 10 minutes of which), the 49ers offense achieved 26 first downs to Pittsburgh’s 11.

They also went 6-for-11 on third down to Pittsburgh’s 3-for-12 and accumulated 436 total yards to Pittsburgh’s 239 (268 to 160 in net passing yards and 168 to 79 in net rushing yards).

Another point of excellence was how the 49ers offensive line did in protecting Jimmy Garoppolo. With Joe Staley out for a number of weeks and an already questionable interior section of the line, Garoppolo’s pass protection looked to be shaky at best.

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But looking at the line for this Steelers game, the Steelers were only able to take Garoppolo down once.

With the monsters in the pass rush (“straight beasts” if you will) the Steelers have in T.J. Watt, Bud Dupree, and Cameron Heyward, what an accomplishment it is for a (let’s be honest) makeshift/fluky Niners offensive line to hold them off the way it did.

There are a lot of positives to hang your hat on from this game if you’re the 49ers. Turnovers need to be cleaned up on the offensive side, but overall, the defense looks fantastic and the offensive game plan is working like a charm thus far.

Unfortunately, they lost Ahkello Witherspoon for a bit after suffering a foot sprain. That probably means either Jason Verrett or Emmanuel Moseley will step up into the number two cornerback role.

The bye week is up next for the 49ers. We’ll see if something else arises to talk about with this team in the meantime.