The San Francisco 49ers defeated the Los Angeles Chargers 22-16 in the Week 10 "Sunday Night Football" matchup at Levi's® Stadium. Here's what the teams had to say following the contest:
Niners Liners
Head coach Kyle Shanahan on the 49ers defense in the second half:
"The second half, just like two weeks ago in our last game, the defense hunkered down, didn't seem like they made any mistakes. Especially there at the end, the last two drives were great."
Shanahan on quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo's performance against the Chargers defense:
"I think Jimmy made some big plays on third and long... Those long ones kept us going and he's always doing a hell of a job with those sneaks."
Shanahan on safety Talanoa Hufanga's game-ending interception:
"To come out and finish it with a pick, we definitely didn't want to watch Herbert do any more downs."
Shanahan on his takeaway from the "Sunday Night Football" game:
"I was proud of our team today. I want to play better, I want to blow people out, I want to score every time we go... Those are the types of games the Chargers are really good at winning. They've had four out of their five wins they've been behind by two scores. Against Atlanta last week, they went up and down the field and moved the ball a lot. Those guys are tough to get in the end zone against. They did that to us today, but we still found a way to win."
Shanahan on running back Elijah Mitchell coming back from injury:
"When Elijah is healthy, he can run the ball. It doesn't take him long... Seeing him in practice, he looked ready to go. That's what we were hoping. We've got a real good back in Elijah and we just brought in a real one with Christian McCaffrey and it's nice to make those guys a one two punch and keep Deebo Samuel Sr. as the bonus."
Shanahan on the team's comeback win:
"It was a challenge throughout the whole game. You never get comfortable with the Chargers but we were able to pull it off in the end."
Safety Talanoa Hufanga on how the 49ers defense bounced back in the second half:
"We went in and made some adjustments at halftime. Just continued to be physical, switch some things up, and we just wanted to get after them up front and play looser coverage in the backend and force them to make the checkdown and just rally to it."
Hufanga on how defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans uplifts San Francisco's defense:
"I'd probably describe him in one word, poise. He has a lot of poise... the poise that he has in the locker room, it just brings all the guys together and just builds our confidence to go out there and make plays."
Linebacker Fred Warner on blitzing:
"It's all about being relentless. Working together as a group on all those pressures and they've been working so far."
Warner on being in control of the game:
"It was such a tight game all the way through, we were still kind of in control the whole game. I know on defense we had to make sure that we were stopping them, especially in the second half, getting those big stops on third down was huge. But I felt like the offense still had control the entire game. Being able to run the ball 40 times, it wears down a team. I never felt like we were really down, it felt even."
Warner on playing a '49ers style' of defense:
"We've been able to play our style of defense. We know that we're one of the best defenses in the league and we've shown that throughout the season. We're just going to keep on continuing to get better, focus on one game at a time and try to be the best."
Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo on sticking together to earn a win:
"There's different ways to win in this league and we definitely made it hard on ourselves. But we've got a lot of resilient guys, a lot of mature guys – that's a big thing on the sideline and at halftime – just the maturity of our team, especially offensively. It's how we stuck together. It wasn't pretty early on and they did some things to give us trouble but we stuck with it and got the W."
Garoppolo on the 49ers defense:
"Our defense was playing great in the second half and you could just feel it and I think that gave us a lot of momentum as an offense. They kept getting stop after stop and we answered."
Garoppolo on how the 49ers offense gets its momentum:
"George gave us that spark that we needed. That's kind of how we are, it takes one play to spark us and get the momentum going and we usually start to roll then."
Running back Elijah Mitchell on his first game back from injury:
"It felt real good to be back. It's been a long time and I'm feeling good coming out of the game."
Mitchell on what it's like playing alongside McCaffrey:
"We could be the best duo of backs in the league, in my opinion."
Chargers Quotes
Chargers head coach Brandon Staley on the 49ers defense:
"That's a good defense. I thought that they did a good job against the run in the second half. We couldn't get anything going in the run game, and then in the passing game it was tight."
Staley on the 49ers defense playing at full strength:
"Our team competed tonight. I don't know how you could see it any different. Our team competed against a team coming off a Bye, a team that's really good, a team that was at full strength, minus Armstead. That's a really good football team."
Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert on LA's offensive performance:
"We didn't execute. We had our opportunities. I thought the defense played great all day and got some big stops. We unfortunately didn't execute when we needed to."
Herbert on playing against the 49ers defense:
"That's a really tough front seven that we're going up against. They've got some pretty good cover guys back there too and they're really well coached."
