It was a painful lesson for the Seahawks: Don’t piss off Deebo Samuel.
The 49ers’ star wideout broke out for a 21-yard catch in Saturday’s Wild Card matchup against Seattle, a third-quarter play that ended with his leg being twisted by Seattle safety Johnathan Abraham. There was no penalty called, and the play only further incensed San Francisco — down 17-016 at the time — en route to a 41-23 win.
“I think anger kind of took over,” tight end George Kittle said. “I don’t know why you’d — first off, excuse my language — why would you wanna piss off Deebo. If you’re going to do that to him, you’re just going to piss off Trent Williams, who’s one of the scariest people on the football field. You’re going to fire up our defense, gonna get our entire team fired up. I don’t know what the point of that is. It should have been a flag, in my opinion, but it is what it is. They gave us another reason to flip the switch even higher. I think that’s what we did. I don’t think we need an excuse to flip that switch. That definitely influenced us to play a little bit angrier.”
The 49ers offense took its anger out on the Seahawks defense, which couldn’t do much to stop Samuel & Co., which ripped off 25 unanswered points — three touchdowns on three straight drives and a field goal.
Samuel, who motioned officials after the play, saw his teammates get into a scuffle with the Seahawks and appreciated their feistiness.
“I stayed down a little because I almost lost my temper,” Samuel said of the play. “You can see the definition of our team of ‘IGYB: I’ve got your back.’ … At the end of the day, I felt like that turned up our team a notch. And as you can see, we went out there and made plays.
“It hurt for sure. In my mind, I was about to lose it. I just got calm.”
And then he got even, taking a pass-and-run play from QB Brock Purdy 74 yards for a fourth-quarter touchdown, a play that accounted for more than half of his team-leading 133 yards on six catches on the night.
“I was worried he was hurt on it. I lost my mind a little bit on that,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “I was real concerned that he was hurt on it. I didn’t like how that looked. I thought it looked pretty bad, the intent of the play. So, I think that pissed a lot of people off. I think it pissed our team off. I think you could kind of feel our team react to that after. I wish we were like that from the first play always, but sometimes when some stuff motivates the guys, I think it’s cool to see us rally together. I know Deebo was bothered, and it was cool he came back and answered.”
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