Jayden Daniels threw for 300 yards and two touchdowns on the same Monday Night Football game in which Terry McLaurin got carted off the field in an air cast, and that combination should scare San Francisco a lot more than it scares Washington. The 49ers won 23-17 at Levi’s Stadium, but how they won it exposed something the final score doesn’t show.
McLaurin went down late in the first quarter, his left knee locked in an air cast, done for the night and feared done for the season. Dan Quinn wasn’t hiding from it afterward, saying bluntly that “the concern is that it could be significant” and that “there’s fear” about how bad the damage is.
By Tuesday morning, Ian Rapoport had the grim version on record.
https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/2112500397919318262
McLaurin was Washington’s engine before the hit — 15 catches, 230 yards, a touchdown, and that was after already missing Week 4 with a hamstring injury. Losing him was supposed to be the story of the night.
It wasn’t.
Daniels went 29-for-40 for 300 yards and two touchdowns with zero interceptions, dragging Washington back from a 20-3 halftime hole without the one receiver his offense was supposedly built around. Daniels didn’t need his best receiver to be great, and a defense that had Washington dead at the break found that out the hard way.
Quinn has already taken the blame for Daniels once this season, after a tie against the Giants turned into a referendum on both of their jobs. A quarterback who throws for 300 and two scores on a night his top target leaves in the first quarter makes that referendum a lot harder to hold against him.
I ran my usual lakefront loop the morning after watching that fourth quarter twice, and I still think Washington’s defense doesn’t get enough credit for keeping that game within reach at all.
San Francisco’s offense told a different story without Evans. Mike Evans had caught three passes for 94 yards, more than anyone else on the field, before the Achilles soreness that had bothered him all week forced him out late in the first half. The 49ers were up 20-3 with him on the field and were outscored 14-3 the rest of the way without him, nearly letting Washington complete the comeback San Francisco was supposed to be too good to allow.
Shanahan didn’t dodge it, either: “It’s definitely a big deal when you lose a player like Mike,” he said, pointing to sacks and a second-half offense that stopped functioning. Evans leads the 49ers in targets and receiving yards. This isn’t a committee that absorbed a hit and moved on; it’s a 6-0 team that just found its single point of failure.
Daniels, for his part, sounded like a quarterback more interested in fixing the next half than celebrating this one: “We need to be a full four-quarter team. Not just a first half or second half team.” That accountability is built into Daniels’ own damage-control season, and it reads very differently than a 6-0 team suddenly discovering what happens when its best player walks off the field.
A 1-4-1 team isn’t supposed to learn something flattering about itself in Week 6.
An undefeated team isn’t supposed to learn something this ugly.
Washington found its quarterback. San Francisco just found its ceiling.
