The San Francisco 49ers are the only 6-0 team in the NFL, and their best players spent Monday night explaining why that was not good enough. A 20-3 halftime lead over the Washington Commanders shrank to 23-17, and the 49ers needed two late stops by safety Malik Mustapha and a sack on the final snap to hold on. George Kittle did not dress it up. “If we were playing a super efficient team,” the tight end said, “I think we’d lose that game pretty easily.”
After Eddy Pineiro’s 33-yard field goal made it 23-3 in the third quarter, San Francisco’s offense got the ball three more times. It ran nine plays for a total of 2 yards and punted all three times.
Kittle: “We just can’t have that”
Kittle said he is always happy to win, “but when you’re up 20, I think we’re up 20 to 3, and you can’t shut the door on a team that has been struggling,” he said of the 1-4-1 Commanders. “Like we just can’t have that.” He pointed down the schedule. “We have more difficult games in our future, like we have to, what, go to Kansas City, like we have to play Seattle again. Anytime you play the Rams, Matt Stafford is Matt Stafford. Like there’s teams out there that will take advantage of us going three and out multiple times.”
He expects Kyle Shanahan to make the same point this week, and he gave an example. In 2022 the 49ers beat Carolina 37-15, and Kittle said Shanahan still “called in half the offense for individual meetings.” The next week San Francisco lost 28-14 in Atlanta. “Yeah, so I mean, he wasn’t wrong, right?” Kittle said. “If you’re just sloppy on certain details, they catch up to you.” The 49ers play in Atlanta again on Sunday.
Kittle did not blame the slowdown on Mike Evans leaving after halftime. Evans had three catches for 94 yards before he went out with Achilles tendinitis. “I don’t think we went three and out three straight times because Mike wasn’t out there. Obviously, he would have helped. But, you know, we just got to execute,” Kittle said. He included himself, mentioning a third-down catch “that I wish I would have brought down.” He also said the rest of the offense has to carry more of the load: “I don’t need to put all that pressure on Brock Purdy. Like we have plenty of guys who can make the plays and we have to go out there and help Brock.”
Purdy “a little upset” with his finish
Purdy completed 21 of 29 passes for 264 yards and a touchdown and was sacked twice. He said Washington blitzed more after halftime and he did not handle it well enough. “They did a good job with, you know, just being a little disruptive and taking checkdowns away and stuff,” he said, which made him hold the ball longer. “So that’s still on me on some certain plays to, you know, get the ball out.”
“I’m obviously a little upset with how I finished the game,” Purdy said. With that lead, he said, the job was to “put your foot on the gas pedal and go make plays and put the game away kind of thing and not put our defense in that kind of situation.” He said he never relaxed at 20-3. “It’s the NFL, dude. Like, Jayden Daniels is a great quarterback. He can bring this team right back, and sure enough, that’s what he did.”
Christian McCaffrey, who scored twice but lost a fumble in the second quarter, said the same thing more briefly: “My standard’s high. I can’t put the ball on the ground.”
Warner: “That game should have never got to that point”
Fred Warner had eight tackles and said 6-0 is “fantastic,” but he sounded a lot like his coach. “The emotions are fresh off of a game like that, where I felt like that game should have never got to that point, right? It’s just how high the standard is for us as a team,” the linebacker said. “You don’t want to just be a 6-0 team. You want to be a team that’s on the rise.”
Warner was also asked about passing the one-year mark since his injury. On Oct. 12, 2025, at Tampa Bay, he broke and dislocated his right ankle and was lost for the regular season. Rachaad White was carrying the ball on that play. On Monday, White caught Washington’s second touchdown pass. Warner said his goal during rehab was “to come back being better than I was before I got injured,” and that he was trying to get back for the playoffs. He returned to practice in January. “In my mind, you know, we’re just scratching the surface,” he said. “Y’all ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Mustapha: “I black out out there”
The game’s biggest moment came with Washington at the San Francisco 17, trailing by six with just over two minutes left. Mustapha stopped Jeremy McNichols for no gain on third-and-3. Right after the two-minute warning, on fourth-and-3, he broke up Daniels’ pass for Treylon Burks. On the fourth down, he said, the 49ers were in man coverage. “I’m just reading the stem of the receiver and then he broke out and I was just trying to race to the pylon,” Mustapha said. “Once we got to the catch point, I just wanted to be physical at the point of attack and get that ball out.”
The third-year safety said he had a slow start to the season and used it to study his own game. “I didn’t have the start that I wanted this year, but it gave me a chance to really scale back, take a step back, observe and see what ways I can improve on my game, even if I’m not getting the physical reps,” he said. Asked whether his collisions ever hurt him, he said, “Nah, I black out out there, so I probably feel it tomorrow.”
Mustapha said he likes it when people call him “the missile,” but he does not want to be known for one play. “I don’t want to be the missile in one play and then, you know, be deflated on another play,” he said. “I don’t want to be a one-hit wonder at all.” His teammates were happy to talk about him. “He’s built like a missile, and he hits like one,” Kittle said. Trent Williams called him “an enforcer” and said the nickname “really describes him good, but it don’t really encapsulate everything he does.” Warner said: “He’s a fantastic player and I’m happy he’s on our side.” The league could still review his unflagged first-quarter hit on Stefon Diggs.
The rookies up front
The final sack was split between Keion White and rookie Romello Height. Height also had four quarterback hits. Williams said the front office “got a bunch of steals in the draft,” and he named Height, a third-round pick (No. 70) out of Texas Tech, and Gracen Halton, a fourth-round pick (No. 107) out of Oklahoma, who also had a sack. “To me it’s absurd how polished of a pass rusher he is,” Williams said of Height. Kittle said one of his favorite stories is lineman Sebastian Valdez, who came up from the practice squad and made a tackle for loss on Monday. He added that he likes drafting older players because “they understand the sense of urgency.”
Rookie linebacker Jaden Dugger, a fifth-round pick, led the team with 11 tackles. “A lot’s on his plate as a rookie, like that’s impressive in itself,” Warner said. “He’s only going to continue to get better.”
San Francisco has a short week before it plays the Falcons on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. “We do have a chance to get on the plane and go to Atlanta and play better,” Purdy said.
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