Kurtenbach: The 49ers’ Week 1 choke job undercuts the team’s high opinion of itself

The 49ers believe their team talent is enough to compete for the Super Bowl.

In their season opener Sunday, they did everything possible to undercut those lofty expectations.

Talent without execution is a disappointment, and the Niners could not have provided a more disappointing start to the 2022 season than their 19-10 loss to the Bears in Chicago.

The 49ers were unquestionably the superior team to the Bears. Even amid a downpour and a flooded field, they dominated every aspect of the game en route to a 10-0  lead midway through the third quarter.

But a team can’t make mistakes — big, obvious, and unacceptable mistakes — for four consecutive quarters and not expect repercussions. Not in the NFL. Not even if you’re as talented as the Niners.

It was a performance befitting of the environment: Sloppy.

“It’s hard enough to play against the opposing team. It’s even harder to play against yourself,” 49ers offensive tackle Trent Williams said.

Sunday’s loss is the sort of game that either defines a season — a constant citation — or is eventually forgotten as a quirky footnote.

Yes, the Super Bowl looks distant in the realm of reasonable expectations for the Niners after Sunday’s game. If you can’t beat the Bears, you’re not a serious contender.

The good news is that the Super Bowl is also a long way away on the actual calendar, too. The Niners have 16 more games to right the wrongs of Week 1.

Thank goodness, because the list of failures is long.

Who to blame, who to blame?

Let’s start with the Niners’ 12 penalties Sunday. The Niners gave the Bears 100 yards and arguably two touchdowns with their lack of discipline and organization.

That doesn’t sound like a Super Bowl team, does it?

And boy, were some of these fouls dumb. The Niners had two 15-yard penalties — an unnecessary roughness and an even more unnecessary face-mask grab — that erased third-down stops and kept Bears drives alive that resulted in two Chicago touchdowns.

But it wasn’t just the penalties. The bigger issue could have been defensive breakdowns that followed those unnecessary fouls. On both of the Bears’ first two scores, the Niners’ defensive secondary let a Bears receiver run downfield wide open.

That, of course, is inadvisable, even against the Bears.

Or perhaps the real problem was an offense that failed to effectively move the ball in the second half and put the Bears in a better position to score than themselves.

First-year starting quarterback Trey Lance wasn’t good Sunday. He might just be a kid, but he’s the most important part of a billion-dollar enterprise now. The stakes are too high for sugar-coating it or grading on the curve.

Yes, Lance had a couple of nice runs and a handful of impressive throws, but the Niners’ offense could not develop a rhythm after it scored its only touchdown of the game early in the second quarter. An offense has many parts — including the head coach, in the case of the Niners — but failure to consistently execute falls on the quarterback.

“I thought we had every chance to run away with it in those first three quarters, especially those first two drives [of the game],” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said.

Instead, the Niners handed the game to the Bears.

Lance’s early fourth-quarter interception was the kind of mistake that loses games. It put Chicago only 21 yards from the end zone, already up 13-10. The Bears capitalized on the great field position, putting the Niners down two scores, all while rain poured.

“It just so happens that when we really had to move the ball through the air, the weather was at its worst,” Williams said.

Would a quarterback change have changed the outcome of the game? I doubt it. We’ve seen Jimmy Garoppolo — now the 49ers’ backup — throw the kind of interception Lance threw Sunday dozens of times during his tenure. It was kind of his thing, and a key reason the Niners moved to Lance.

But there’s no doubt that the Niners needed better quarterback play Sunday.

Lance will have to provide it, and there’s no time to ease into things. That luxury was lost Sunday.

Now, I suppose, if you want, you can blame the weather for the Niners’ loss. It was no doubt a factor in the game. Solider Field was covered in puddles, and by the end of the game, FOX’s television broadcast had to superimpose yard lines onto the field.

San Francisco won’t play in conditions that ridiculous again this season. That’s a good thing, because “football weather” like Sunday rarely fosters high-quality football.

But it should be noted that the Bears played in the same wind and rain and on the same field. They seemed to manage just fine.

The question now is how the Niners will manage this disappointment moving forward. They have a hellacious schedule — this was supposed to be one of their few easy wins this season — and have justifiably lost the benefit of the doubt following Sunday’s loss.

No one said success would come easy, but the Niners didn’t need to make it as hard as they did in Week 1.

And now they need to dig themselves out of the rain-filled hole they dug for themselves on Sunday.

A great team — a true Super Bowl contender — will be able to do it.

Are the Niners that kind of team?