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Six and oh, and annoyed about it

Everything that could wobble, wobbled. Christian McCaffrey fumbled for the first time all season. Eddy Piñeiro missed another extra point. Jacob Cowing did Jacob Cowing things when attempting to return punts. The 49ers committed 8 penalties for 63 yards, and the worst of them kept landing at the worst moments: a facemask on a kickoff, a late hit that turned a stop into first-and-goal, kick-catch interference that gave a finished team the ball near midfield with 52 seconds left and one last chance to steal it.

Washington scored 14 unanswered points after halftime. Daniels finished 22 of 27 with a passer rating of 124.8,² which is its own kind of annoying, because the defense played well enough to bury this team by four scores and instead spent the fourth quarter negotiating with it. Terry McLaurin left on a cart for Washington (prayers up for a speedy recovery and for the cart ride to be more precautionary than anything else), and nobody on either sideline needed the reminder of how thin the ice is.

And above all of it, the heartbreak: Mike Evans, gone again. Hold that thought, because he is the whole story of this offense.

Frustrating, annoying and weird. That is the honest review. It is also a win, on Monday night, with a roster held together by tape.

The record, and the fig leaf

On the fifth pass of the night, a six-yard screen to McCaffrey, Brock Purdy threw the 1,500th pass of his career and officially qualified for the career leaderboards. His career passer rating when he crossed the line was 105.4. The record had belonged to Lamar Jackson at 102.7.³ Aaron Rodgers sits third at 101.8.⁴ Read it again, slowly. The last pick of the 2022 draft is now the highest rated passer in the history of the National Football League.

I am #MVPurdy, 100 percent, and I am done being coy about it.

Monday he went 21 of 29 for 264 yards and a touchdown, with no interceptions.⁵ He opened the game 5 of 6 and finished the first drive with a touchdown to George Kittle. He scrambled out of trouble on third-and-11 and ran right past a man to move the chains. He kept the ball on fourth down on the 14-play, six-minute drive that made it 20-3. He took his sacks, threw the ball away when there was nothing there, and never once gave Washington the cheap one. In the second half, with the offense coming apart around him, he still found Kittle for 35 yards on the one drive that produced points, and even that drive stalled in the red zone on a tipped ball that was likely a Brandin Cooks touchdown pass in the end zone, and had to settle for a field goal.

Purdy is the man. All the praise in the universe. But here is the part the national conversation does not want to sit with… Purdy is doing this while the receiver room burns down around him, because exactly one man is holding a leaf over this offense.

Evans was questionable all week, the ribs he broke last month and the Achilles that would not calm down. He played anyway. He caught a 25-yard pass on the first play of the game. He opened the second drive with 54 more yards down the field. When he limped off in the second quarter, stretching that Achilles on his way to the locker room, he had 94 yards on three catches, and the offense left the field with him. He was ruled out.

The postgame word is better than it looked. Shanahan said the Achilles is the same soreness that kept Evans out of practice all week, that it simply acted up, and that he does not expect Evans to need further testing.⁶ Jennifer Lee Chan reported the Achilles is intact and Evans will miss a little time, with a return after the Week 8 bye in play if there are no setbacks.⁷ So the fig leaf is not torn. He is just threadbare, and Atlanta on Sunday is a lot to ask of a threadbare leaf with a bye sitting right behind it.

What remained was the bottom of the depth chart. Jordan Watkins caught one ball, for 22 yards. Brandin Cooks caught one ball, for 13. Cowing keeps screwing up his punt returns. The 49ers went three-and-out three straight times late, and as Niners Nation put it during the game, it is no coincidence that they struggled without Evans.⁸

Count the room. Ricky Pearsall is gone for the season. De'Zhaun Stribling is out until late November. Deebo Samuel did not dress. Christian Kirk still has not been activated. By my count, this team finished Monday night down to its sixth receiver.

When Evans is healthy and on the field, this configuration of the 49ers is unstoppable on offense. When he is not, I walk away from these games feeling completely naked, and I suspect Kyle Shanahan does too.

The line was great, the backfield was not.

Now the defense, because the postgame conversation is going to get this wrong.

The defensive line was great. Not good. Great. Osa Odighizuwa sacked Daniels on third-and-9 to kill a drive. Gracen Halton drew a holding call and sacked Daniels himself in the second quarter, and as Niners Nation noted during the game, you have to go back a while to find a 49ers defensive tackle drawing holding calls like that. Mykel Williams, in his second game back from the torn ACL that ended his rookie season, bull rushed through the tackle and ran right over Jayden Daniels achieving the second sack of his career. Later, Williams tipped a pass at the line that forced a punt, until a flag in the secondary brought the play back and handed Washington a fresh set of downs. Remember that sequence. It is the whole night in miniature, the front makes the play, the back end gives it back, in many cases because of a penalty.

By the end, the front had sacked Daniels four times,⁹ the last one shared by Height and White on the final snap of the game. Daniels is one of the hardest quarterbacks in football to bring down, and this group did it without Nick Bosa.

One stain, and it belongs to Halton… The low hit on Washington guard Sam Cosmi that sent Cosmi to the medical tent. It was a bad penalty, and people can fairly call it a dirty hit. Thank God Cosmi came back into the game. Halton is too good and too important to be the guy who does that.

The problems Monday were behind the line and in the flag count. Renardo Green got smoked, and the replay of the illegal contact flag charged to Malik Mustapha showed the contact was Green's. Upton Stout left in the second half with the shoulder that had limited him all week, which at least answers the question hanging over him: he was playing hurt.¹⁰ Ashtyn Davis came in for him, and Davis got beaten and flagged too, including the flag that erased a Height sack on fourth-and-8.¹¹ Tig Brown is slow. Mustapha, again, saved the game at the goal line on fourth-and-3, jarring the ball loose the way he does. They do not win Monday without him.

The offense deserves its share of this section, too. After halftime the balance vanished. The second half was a sack, a sailed throw and a punt, over and over, until the clock became the only plan.

Every team in this league is one injury away from trouble. The 49ers are about as insulated as any team in football, and they are about to get more insulated. Bosa, out since Week 2 with the calf injury, said it himself last week: "Definitely Atlanta, possibly next week. Probably."¹² Shanahan wants him back before the bye, and Sunday in Atlanta is the last game before it.

But I am always praying for health, because Monday showed the margin. One Achilles on one receiver changed the temperature of a 6-0 team in a single quarter.

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Which brings me to the point of this column, and it is not need.

This defense does not need saving. It is good, and it is young, and it just held a team to 17 points with its best player in street clothes. Brock Purdy is locked down and playing at an MVP level. The man is, by the official record book, the most efficient passer the sport has ever produced. The Super Bowl window is not coming. It is open, right now, tonight, with this roster and this season.

So I do not care how good the 2027 draft is supposed to be. Draft picks are a promise about a February three years from now. This team is trying to win the one four months from now.

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I want Khalil Mack. I want DeForest Buckner. I want both, coming in waves. Buckner wrecking the middle, Mack off one edge, Bosa back on the other, and Mykel Williams, Osa and Height plus Halton rotating in fresh behind them, against the offensive lines of a passing league, most of which are not very good. Waves upon waves upon waves of pass rushing game wreckers. Pass rush like that does not just win games, it breaks other teams.

Steph Sanchez said it during the game, and she is right: "This 49ers defense is nasty omg wait until they trade for somebody." Wait until they trade for somebody. So trade for somebody. Trade for two somebodies.

My board

Fake GM hat on. Here is the board.

Mack first. My price is a 2027 third-round pick, and I would go to a 2028 second before I let somebody else have him.

Buckner second, and my price has moved since I first wrote about him two weeks ago.¹³ A 2027 fourth, or similar value, and if Indianapolis pushes, a 2028 third, and I will sleep fine. He is 32, in the final year of his contract, with a reported cap hit of $26.6 million this season and about $10 million in cash still owed,¹⁴ and he has 26 tackles and four sacks through six games¹⁵ for a 2-4 team that woke up Monday without a general manager. That is a buyer's market wearing a name tag.

One line in the sand; if the Colts ask for the rookie as part of a Buckner deal (Gracen Halton), the answer is EFF NO. You do not trade the future of the position to rent its past. You add the past to the future and let them wreck people together.

And the daydream, for the record, Larry Krueger floated the idea of San Francisco landing Quenton Nelson and Buckner together out of Indianapolis, and I agree with Larry. For both of them, I would trade a first-round pick. It is not going to happen. But it deserved one paragraph in the sun. (Thank you, Krueg.)

The original sin

Because here is the thing about Buckner that no other name on the market carries. Bringing him home is not just a football move. It is the correction of the worst decision of the Lynch and Shanahan era, and everybody in the building knows it.

In March of 2020, the 49ers paid Arik Armstead and traded DeForest Buckner to Indianapolis for the 13th pick in the draft.¹⁶ It was a bad decision then, and it has aged worse. They should have let Armstead go and re-signed Buckner. Full stop.

Look at the tree. The 13th pick became Javon Kinlaw at No. 14 after a one-spot trade back. The fourth-round pick that came back in that same trade back, No. 117, got packaged with the 31st pick to move up to No. 25 for Brandon Aiyuk. So one All-Pro defensive tackle, a man who has been one of the best interior linemen in football every year since, became an injured Kinlaw and the whole Aiyuk saga. And on Monday night, Kinlaw played defensive tackle in this game (prayers up for Javon too, hope he isn't seriously injured).

Matt Maiocco wrote this week that the 49ers could bring back "a player they never should have dealt in the first place."¹⁷ Matt is being polite. They never should have dealt him, and that deal is a receipt this franchise has been carrying for six years.

Come home

And now the league is handing them the chance to fix it, gift wrapped, in the middle of a 6-0 season.

Sunday, Indianapolis lost at home, 26-20, to a Tennessee team that came in 0-5, after leading 13-0 at halftime. Buckner stood in front of reporters afterward and said what a man says when he is done: "I'm sick and tired of the same song and dance every year."¹⁸

Monday morning, hours before our game kicked off, the Colts fired Chris Ballard, the general manager who made the 2020 trade in the first place. ESPN's Stephen Holder wrote that firing the GM and not the coach "strongly suggests we might be headed for a fire sale here."¹⁹

Then Kyle Juszczyk, a captain of this football team and Buckner's teammate for three seasons, went to ESPN's Instagram post of those comments and wrote two words: "Come home." He tagged him. It was the top reply on the post.²⁰ Players under contract do not publicly recruit other players under contract by accident, and a fullback who has been around as long as Juice has does not do anything by accident.

By the third quarter of our game, the reunion was trending on X, roughly 1,320 posts and climbing. Grant Cohn posted a Buckner video on Monday. David Lombardi posted a Buckner video on Monday. Maiocco made the case in print. The entire 49ers world spent the day talking about one defensive tackle in Indianapolis.

I say this with love, because I was early. On October 8, in this column, I made Buckner the third scenario in my trade deadline piece, "Check, Call, and ALL IN," and called it "The Reunion." My price was a 2027 fifth. And I wrote "No reporter has connected him to a trade; this one is all heart." Two days later, in the Supersize piece, I put the condition on it that Buckner is "only available if the Colts collapse."²¹

Well, the Colts have collapsed. The reporters have connected him. The heart pick has a news hook now, and my price went up a round, because the whole league can finally see what was there two weeks ago.

Waianae and Kapolei

There is one more layer to this, and I am going to write it plainly, as someone from Hawaiʻi.

DeForest Buckner was born in Waianae, out on the Leeward Coast, and he grew up there. He went to Punahou (just like Barack Obama), and became a first-round pick and an All-Pro.²²

And De'Zhaun Stribling, born in Kapolei, about fifteen minutes down the road from Waianae, and went to Kapolei High School.²³ The 49ers took him in the second round in April.²⁴ He is out right now with the ankle, due back around late November, and when he comes back, this team could have Kapolei's own catching passes and, if Lynch does the right thing, Waianae's own wrecking the middle of offensive lines, on a 6-0 team chasing a Super Bowl.

Two guys from Oahu. For kamaʻaina 49ers fans, and we are everywhere, it would be glorious!

On the record

So let me put it on the record, the way this column does.

John Lynch MUST make at least one trade before the deadline on November 10, and I would bet on more than one. I think the name is Khalil Mack. I hope the second name is DeForest Buckner. And after watching Evans limp off again, do not be surprised if there is a third phone call, for an X receiver, because Monday night was a documentary on what this offense is without one.²⁵

On Sunday the 49ers go to Atlanta, against a Falcons team that has been a historically difficult opponent for this franchise. Win there, and this team goes into its bye week at 7-0.

And the last word, since the record book got rewritten on Monday night, if this team ever gets healthy, really healthy, Bosa back, Evans, Stribling and the rest of the wide receiving corps healed, the 49ers make a deep playoff run. And with Mike Evans on the field, it should be considered the odds-on favorite in the NFC to make the Super Bowl.

The window is open. The quarterback is historic. The defense is young and nasty and a wrecker or two short of terrifying.

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Route 49, the Essential49ers newsletter, is seven stories every morning, the ones that matter, before the coffee cools. Pass this to a friend.

Sources (25)

1. 49ers escape Week 6 with a win over the Commanders after a second-half letdown (Niners Nation, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
2. Daniels: 22 of 27, 124.8 rating (Niners Nation recap, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
3. Purdy makes NFL history, breaking Jackson's passing record (Bleacher Report, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
4. Purdy makes NFL history on Monday night (ClutchPoints, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
5. 49ers survive Commanders rally, remain undefeated (Sactown Sports, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
6. Shanahan postgame: Evans battling Achilles tendinitis (Niners Wire, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
7. Report: Mike Evans Achilles intact, to miss time (NBC Sports, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
8. 'It is no coincidence they struggled without Evans' (Niners Nation recap, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
9. 49ers grades after the 23-17 win: defensive line, four sacks (49ers On SI, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
10. Stout left the game with a shoulder injury; Davis replaced him (49ers On SI grades, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
11. Davis flagged on fourth-and-8, erasing a Height sack (Niners Nation recap, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
12. Bosa on his return: 'Definitely Atlanta, possibly next week. Probably.' (NBC Sports Bay Area, Oct. 9, 2026) ↩
13. Check, Call, and ALL IN (Essentially a Take, Oct. 8, 2026) ↩
14. Buckner's $26.6 million cap number and remaining cash (Athlon Sports, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
15. Maiocco: 49ers should be highly interested in a Buckner reunion (NBC Sports Bay Area, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
16. DeForest Buckner (Wikipedia) ↩
17. 'A player they never should have dealt in the first place' (Maiocco, NBC Sports Bay Area, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
18. Buckner: 'sick and tired of the same song and dance' (New York Post, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
19. Holder: the Ballard firing 'strongly suggests' a fire sale (Yardbarker, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
20. Juszczyk urges Buckner to 'come home' (49ers Webzone, Oct. 19, 2026) ↩
21. Supersize: the McDonalds Defense (Essentially a Take, Oct. 10, 2026) ↩
22. Punahou alum Buckner donates $20,000 to Waianae (Hawaii Prep World) ↩
23. De'Zhaun Stribling bio: born in Kapolei, Kapolei High School (49ers.com) ↩
24. De'Zhaun Stribling: 2026 second-round pick, No. 33 overall (Wikipedia) ↩
25. Postgame update: Shanahan said there is a chance Christian Kirk is activated for Week 7 in Atlanta, which would soften, not settle, the receiver problem. Demarcus Robinson is not likely to come off injured reserve that week. (Niners Wire, postgame.) ↩