SANTA CLARA — The Los Angeles Rams didn’t just beat the 49ers 42-26 Sunday.
No, the Rams put the 49ers in their place.
All this plucky, us-against-the-world stuff the injury-riddled Niners had been selling? It’s all well and good. It even works most weeks.
But on Sunday, the Niners played a bonafide, no-doubt-about-it Super Bowl contender, and they didn’t stand much of a chance from the opening kickoff.
There are levels to success in the NFL, and the Rams are clearly an echelon higher than San Francisco.
And on Sunday, the Rams seemed intent on making that point as often as possible.
The Rams did what the best teams do: They put their foot on the Niners’ throat and squeezed, letting up only because domination became boring.
The Niners allowing six touchdowns was bad enough, but offering little to no resistance in the process is a special kind of awful.
Apologists will note that the Niners gained only eight fewer yards than the Rams on Sunday.
That’s the kind of statistical fool’s gold that looks pretty on paper but doesn’t mean a lick when you’re a team that’s chasing the entire afternoon. And when you lead 7-0 in penalties and 2-0 in turnovers, you deserve to chase.
Ultimately, football is a game of moments, and every time the Niners had a chance to get up off the mat — to make the game interesting — they face-planted.
Or to be more specific, every time the defense needed to make a stop, they found themselves overpowered, out of position, or both.
If defense wins championships, what does this ramshackle 49ers unit win? On Sunday, it rarely generated pressure, got gashed for 5.2 yards per carry by Kyren Williams, and deserved the Benny Hill soundtrack to play over its effort on the back end.
“We thought we could slow them down,” Kyle Shanahan said after the game.
They thought wrong.
The Niners couldn’t stop a nosebleed Sunday. The 42 points allowed are a new season high.
And in that ugly, far-too-conspicuous number, the Rams delivered the answer to that big question.
A title — be it the division, conference or Super Bowl — might have been in the cards for an earlier edition of San Francisco, but it is firmly out of the question for these Niners.
What else can you think after you watched Matthew Stafford play quarterback like it was a two-hand touch game in the park, firing dimes to every corner of the field and completing 70 percent of his throws while averaging nine yards per target?
He was in complete, calm control of the entire game. Every moment — even when he was sitting on the bench as the Niners were on offense — was about him. That’s the signature of a quarterback who is competing to win another ring.
“It wasn’t anything really in particular, it just wasn’t good enough,” Shanahan said of the defense.
Which is coach-speak for “It was everything.”
And amid all the lies the Niners have told about themselves in recent weeks, at least that isn’t one.
What worked against a poorly coached, talent-short team with a young quarterback who cannot see the field (the Falcons and Giants) stood no chance against a high-level operation like the Rams.
The Niners’ offense, to its credit, knew the score coming in: They had to score to win.
George Kittle offered the concept with some tact in recent weeks, and tried to lay it out again after Sunday’s loss:
“Our team is going to have to rely on our really good veteran offense to score a lot of points and not turn the ball over,” Kittle said. “That’s the way our season’s going to go.”
Can this offense carry the Niners to wins? Sure. I wouldn’t presume anything, but with Christian McCaffrey and Kittle healthy and an offensive line that’s looked pretty good in recent weeks, the Niners can move the ball, whether it’s Mac Jones or Brock Purdy under center.
Along those lines, the truth is that Sunday’s loss changes absolutely nothing for the Niners’ ultimate trajectory. They’re still on the same track: They’ll keep clocking the bad teams, losing to the elite, and playing baffling, anything-could-happen games against the mediocre ones.
The loss to the Rams merely pops the delusion that the 49ers were anything more than a wild-card playoff team.
The good news? The Niners’ schedule remains full of mediocrity, so they’ll probably make the playoffs.
The bad news? That’s all this season will be: one extra game, maybe two if the cosmos align. (At some point, things have to go the Niners’ way, right?)
Because, sure, the NFC might look wide open, but in this league in November, the best teams separate themselves from the pack.
The Rams were the best team. The 49ers were simply another squad in the pack.