NEW ORLEANS — Across the last month, the best team in the N.F.C. has been more of an abstract concept than an unassailable certainty. The contenders relish cannibalizing one another. The distinction shifts week to week.
At the Superdome on Sunday, it changed from quarter to quarter, drive to drive, snap to snap. The final play of the San Francisco 49ers’ 48-46 win against the New Orleans Saints offered closure to an exhausting, exhilarating game but an altogether temporary rejoinder to a debate that will rage until the conference champion is crowned in six weeks.
When Robbie Gould’s 30-yard field goal soared through the uprights as time expired, it provided a measure of redemption for a San Francisco team that had lost both its previous games against so-called best teams (Seattle and Baltimore) on last-second field goals, a measly 6 points separating it from an unbeaten season. The kick also allowed the 49ers (11-2) to keep pace with the Seahawks atop the N.F.C. West, improving their chances of securing home-field advantage throughout the N.F.L. playoffs — but no more than that.
“It would be more fun to talk about,” Coach Kyle Shanahan said, “if everybody had bad records.”
But they do not, not in a conference in which the Saints have beaten Seattle, which edged San Francisco, which has now won in New Orleans. Instead of seizing control of the conference, as they would have done with a victory, the Saints (10-3) dropped to the No. 3 seed, behind Green Bay (10-3), and in danger of missing the first-round bye they so covet. They demolished what might be the league’s best defense — a unit that entered Sunday having allowed the fewest passing yards through 12 games since 1989 (Minnesota), according to Pro Football Reference — and lost because they, like so many others this season, could not do one thing: tackle George Kittle.
For the uninitiated, Kittle is the 49ers’ tight end. After the game, he described his motto: “Run through people but have a good time doing it.” Facing fourth-and-2 at the San Francisco 33-yard line with 39 seconds remaining, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo (who finished 26 of 35 for 349 passing yards and four touchdowns) zipped a pass in the flat to Kittle, who shook C.J. Gardner-Johnson before carrying Marcus Williams for another 15 yards even as Williams latched on to his face mask. The play netted 53 yards, 39 yards on the pass play and another 14 yards for the face mask penalty, and positioned Gould for a 30-yard attempt.
“He’s playing the game to be rude and bully people,” 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman said.
The offensive zaniness of the first half gave way to unadulterated mayhem. The teams conspired for 55 points in the half, 581 total yards, four combined incompletions in 32 passes. The haymaking plays gave way to turnovers, two of them; to trickery, an unsuccessful New Orleans fake punt; to points on the final five possessions, including a seven-play, 76-yard sequence capped by Drew Brees’s 18-yard pass to Tre’Quan Smith that shoved the Saints ahead, 46-45, for the first time since late in the second quarter.
Much like New England, which has created a dynasty by mastering evolution, New Orleans mutates from year to year, and this version of the Saints has embraced a different pathway to success.
His arm strength declining, Brees does not scorch defenses with deep passes so much as bedevil them with shorter ones: According to the N.F.L.’s Next Gen Stats, his average throw has traveled just 6.3 yards, trailing only his backup, Teddy Bridgewater.
Once a catalyst for aerial domination, Brees, who turns 41 next month, has facilitated an offense more efficient than explosive, imposing in its precision. As ever, he leads the N.F.L. in completion percentage, and age has diminished neither his ability to manipulate defenses nor shape throws, such as his first touchdown, up the seam, against the zone, to Jared Cook.
Three seconds into the second quarter, Brees had tied a season high with three scoring passes. Four series into the game, Brees had thrown for more yards (172) than San Francisco’s defense had allowed on average (134.3).
To have a chance at beating the Saints, particularly amid the unforgiving din of the Superdome, Shanahan coached the game with the relentlessness of a jackhammer. On the first play after falling behind by 20-7, Garoppolo threw deep, tossing a 75-yard touchdown to Emmanuel Sanders.
Rather than fly back after losing at Baltimore, the 49ers spent last week practicing in Bradenton, Fla., at IMG Academy, where they installed a play that epitomized their approach: a reverse to Sanders. He executed it to perfection all week, until the last rep, and as Sanders readied to throw Sunday, he said, he thought to himself, “Man, don’t throw a duck again.”
Sanders lofted a 35-yard scoring pass to Raheem Mostert, who on the next drive helped propel San Francisco to a 28-27 halftime advantage with a 10-yard touchdown one play after taking a pitch — from fullback Kyle Juszczyk.
“We knew we had to take risks,” Shanahan said.
In the top-heavy N.F.C., that is how the elite distinguish themselves, with aggressiveness. The 49ers arrived at a fortress, lost several players to injury — among them center Weston Richburg (knee), carted off in the third quarter; defensive end Dee Ford (hamstring); and Sherman — and won the type of close game it did not last week, in Baltimore.
On Sunday, when Garoppolo outplayed Brees and Shanahan outwitted Sean Payton, the 49ers were the better team. How the next six weeks unfold will determine whether they — and not New Orleans, Seattle, Green Bay or Minnesota — are the best in the N.F.C.
Source: Football - nytimes.com
