–Head coach Kyle Shanahan was criticized for his play selection on the 49ers’ final possession of Monday’s 33-30 loss at Green Bay.
He took time the next day to explain his thinking.
Following a Green Bay touchdown that tied the score at 30 and a kickoff that was returned to the San Francisco 47 with the aid of a 15-yard Packers penalty, the 49ers took possession with 1:49 remaining and all three timeouts at their disposal, while Green Bay already had exhausted all of its timeouts.
The drive began with a seven-yard completion to tight end George Kittle. Without using a timeout, C.J. Beathard then threw incomplete on second-and-3 with 1:16 to go, and was intercepted on a deep ball with 1:13 left.
The Packers then drove for a winning field goal.
The biggest gripe among the armchair quarterbacks: Why not run on second-and-3, use up another half-minute, and give Aaron Rodgers less of an opportunity should the 49ers eventually have to give up the ball?
“You’re trying to win a game,” Shanahan explained. “Yeah, in hindsight when it’s over, anytime something doesn’t work, whether I like my play call or not, if it doesn’t work, you always wish you did something different.
“(On) second-and-3, I felt pretty strongly that they were going to come after us and bring more than we could handle in the run game, which usually leaves open a very good slant window. That’s what I thought was the best thing at the time. But they tipped the ball. They tipped it and we didn’t get a chance to complete it, which was unfortunate.
“If I were to have it back, yeah, I’d love to call something that worked.
“But then when you get into third-and-3 versus an all-out blitz, there’s not many runs for that. That was the play that we didn’t make right there and that’s what happened.
“You’re always concerned about giving it back to Aaron. But I thought we had a chance to win the game right there.”
After the interception, Rodgers drove the Packers 81 yards in the final 1:07, with Mason Crosby ending it with a 27-yard field goal.
–The 49ers added a veteran to their quarterback mix Tuesday when they signed Tom Savage.
The 28-year-old made nine starts for the Houston Texans after being their fourth-round pick in 2014.
Shanahan made it immediately clear that Savage would start out as the club’s third-stringer behind Beathard and Nick Mullens, despite having a huge experience advantage over the latter.
“It’s very hard for someone to compete for the backup spot,” Shanahan explained. “The only reps the backup spot gets in the NFL is the scout-team cards. So we’ll give him some scout-team cards to let him get some work and stuff.
“But in order to have the guys compete to be a backup player, that means I’d have to give both of them reps over our starting quarterback, and that’s not something anyone would ever do at this time of year.”
Experience doesn’t trump practicality, Shanahan insisted.
“One guy knows our offense and knows how to line people up and has played in it and has done a lot of good things. Our team has confidence in him,” he noted of Mullens. “Another guy just got here and is just trying to learn what the words mean. He has ability. He’s a guy that I’ve always been impressed with his ability. But he just got here.
“By no means are we trying to have a No. 2 quarterback competition battle right now. We’re trying to get our starters ready to play, continue to prepare our backups in case something does happen, and if that does ever happen, we’ll deal with it then.”
QUOTE TO NOTE: “We’ve got to make sure that mistake doesn’t happen again.” — 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, on a defensive misalignment that helped produce a Green Bay touchdown pass in Monday’s 33-30 loss. Shanahan said a 49er defender should have noticed the error and called a timeout.
BY THE NUMBERS: 400 — The number of total net yards the 49ers have surpassed in each of their last two games (447 vs. Arizona, 401 vs. Green Bay). The last time the 49ers topped 400 net yards in three consecutive games was Weeks 14-16 of the 2003 season against Arizona, Cincinnati and Philadelphia.
