The San Francisco 49ers pulled off a big win on Sunday over the Green Bay Packers, there's no denying that. The offense ran like a well-oiled machine, while the defense kept its slip-ups to a minimum until the fourth quarter. It was a rare occasion when the 49ers' offense outshone the defense (though preventing Aaron Rodgers from throwing for five touchdowns is a feat all on its own at this point), and today we're going to look at something in particular.
Since the offense played well, we're going to look at one player who was bad on offense, and since the defense sort of fell apart, we'll take a look at someone on defense that was good. First up, we'll take a look at the offense.
LT Joe Staley was particularly bad on offense for the 49ers. In my initial recap I mentioned that Staley had a decent performance against LB Clay Matthews, but after reviewing the film, I was dead wrong. Look for my post on Niners Nation late Tuesday morning where I break down each and every sack, but suffice to say, Staley had a part in just about every one of them. He struggled to contain Matthews on so many plays and if it wasn't Matthews who actually hit Alex Smith, it was Matthews who was forced to step into a sack.
It wasn't exactly the worst performance of Staley's career (despite what he says), but it didn't inspire much confidence going forward. Now, who had a great performance on defense?
LB NaVorro Bowman had a great day on defense. Not only did he manage to snag an Aaron Rodgers interception for the only takeaway of the game, he made some excellent tackles and wasn't really beat in coverage. I said on Niners Nation that Bowman needed to have a huge game for his own mental state, and he did. The reasoning was that he had such a great year last year, his expectations for himself were higher than anyone else's. So he needed to come out and have either an excellent performance or a consistent one. He got the former.
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