SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Jim Tomsula understands he wasn’t promoted to head coach this offseason to get excited about one-point home wins in November that improve his club’s record to 3-6 in an already lost season.
And that’s exactly the attitude with which he approached both Sunday’s postgame and Monday’s day-after press conferences following the San Francisco 49ers’ 17-16 win over the Atlanta Falcons.
With a chance to build upon the momentum of the Blaine Gabbert-led win, Tomsula instead waited until well after the bright lights of his weekly press conference had been turned off Monday evening to make it official that, predictably, Gabbert would get a second start Nov. 22 at Seattle.
“Let me clarify this,” Tomsula said Monday morning, after having failed to do so repeatedly earlier in his weekly press conference and after Sunday’s win. “Last week when I came up here and let you know that I was going with Blaine for the week, I think I was completely transparent when I said Blaine would be our quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons game and then we would get into the bye week and we will go from there. I believe that was straight-up.
“So, from that conversation to where I am right now, I will have conversations with my players, and after I have those conversations, I will have conversations with you all.”
Those meetings took place Monday afternoon, after which Tomsula, with the moment completely lost, quietly disclosed that Gabbert had earned a second start.
The delay was curious at best given the circumstances. The 49ers were coming off arguably their most impressive offensive performance of the season.
Sure, they’d only scored 17 points, a figure topped four times previously.
But they’d done so without their top wideout (injured Anquan Boldin), their top tight end (traded Vernon Davis) and their top three running backs (injured Carlos Hyde, Reggie Bush and Mike Davis).
And, for the most part, with a new right tackle (Trent Brown) … and quarterback.
“Blaine did a nice job, did some really good things with his feet and his arm and his brain. Really did a nice job, so congratulations to him,” Tomsula said. “But I thought across the board offensively everybody stepped it up and we did a better job and was happy to see that.”
If Tomsula had been planning to go back to Colin Kaepernick, which would have been a greater upset than the win over the 6-3 Falcons, he’d certainly left the door open by noting that Gabbert had gotten a lot more help than his predecessor.
In fact, Tomsula spent more time Monday praising Gabbert for the preparation for his first start than the start itself.
“Since Blaine Gabbert has gotten here, he’s done a wonderful job,” Tomsula noted. “He has been a true professional. He has worked extremely hard. He’s taken the coaching to heart and I don’t have anything but high marks in all those areas.”
And now, Gabbert has high marks as the 49ers’ starting quarterback, whether Tomsula was in a hurry to admit it or not.
–Colin Kaepernick took two snaps in Sunday’s 17-16 win over the Atlanta Falcons.
And in that short period of time, he nearly put the 49ers’ coaching staff in a bit of a predicament.
Kaepernick came on in relief of his replacement, Blaine Gabbert, after the new starter had taken a hard hit after throwing a pass early in the fourth quarter.
On first-and-10, Kaepernick first was asked to hand off to Shaun Draughn, who was stopped for no gain.
Kaepernick then lofted a near-perfect bomb into the hands of well-covered tight end Vance McDonald, who couldn’t make what would have been at least a 40-yard catch.
“I’m still thinking about it,” McDonald said of the drop after the game. “It’s the one thing that’s going to keep me from really enjoying this win.”
Gabbert was then reinserted into the game.
The question is: Would the 49ers have made the move had McDonald come down with the ball?
Tomsula wouldn’t address the speculation, noting only that taking Gabbert out in the first place was the medical staff’s call, not his own.
“He was kind of upset coming off,” the coach assured. “He came to the sidelines and was checked thoroughly.”
–Lost in the Gabbert hysteria Sunday was one of the 49ers’ best defensive efforts of the season.
The Falcons had been held to 16 points or fewer just once previously this season.
In order to do so, the 49ers held Devonta Freeman, the league’s leading rusher, to 12 yards on 12 carries, and kept wideout Julio Jones, who had scored touchdowns in his previous two games and had totaled six in Atlanta’s first eight contests, out of the end zone despite 137 yards in receptions.
“He had a hard time with the coverage,” 49ers safety Eric Reid said of Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, who went 30-for-45 for 303 yards. “We were able to mess with him a little bit and it worked out for us.”
Star inside linebacker NaVorro Bowman thought the 49ers’ quarterback change paid dividends on defense as well.
“Blaine had to approach it free-minded so he could give it his best shot,” Bowman said. “We wanted to rally around him and not think, ‘OK, the backup quarterback is our quarterback.’ We rallied around Blaine and he did a great job today to get us this win.”
–Gabbert benefitted from a balanced attack, a bit of a surprise in that the 49ers were missing their top three backs, replaced by a guy off the practice squad (Kendall Gaskins) and two free agents off the scrap heap (Shaun Draughn and Pierre Thomas).
Draughn rushed 16 times for 58 yards — 46 more than Falcons star Devonta Freeman — and added 38 yards on four receptions. Gaskins (20) and Thomas (12) combined with Gabbert (32) to add another 64 rushing yards, helping the 49ers achieve their second-highest rushing total (133 yards) of the season.
“We stuck with it,” Tomsula said of the running game. “We wanted to commit to it and we stuck with it. We stayed with it and wanted to play complementary football. We wanted to be balanced. I mean, everybody tells you that, but that’s what we were trying to do.”