Ugly. That's the only way to describe it.
Stop me if you've heard this one before--the Minnesota Vikings were beaten soundly in every phase of the game on national television. The San Francisco 49ers bludgeoned the hapless Vikings by a score of 20-3 in the final game of the Week 1 NFL slate.
Every concern we had about this team came to fruition in Week 1, including some other concerns that we weren't even originally concerned about. The beat up offensive line? An abject disaster. Safety? Both starter Andrew Sendejo and replacement Robert Blanton made no impact. Chad Greenway? He looked old. Blair Walsh? Missing field goals like the preseason never ended.
But we knew about those concerns. There were other areas of concern that came out of nowhere. For instance, where was the pressure from the supposedly vaunted defensive line? Where was the accuracy of Teddy Bridgewater? Where was the discipline of a Mike Zimmer coached team? Where was the end zone? And oh yeah...
...where the hell was Adrian Peterson?
Peterson finished the night with a total of 13 touches for 52 total yards. He sat out quite a few snaps due to the Vikings playing catch-up in the second half, but that's an alarmingly low amount of usage for a very well rested star running back.
It's not like the 49ers were pulling out all sort of gadget plays to move the ball either. They lined up in big sets, called simple rollouts, and simply beat the Vikings with incredibly basic football concepts.
But then again, are we that surprised? It's the Minnesota Vikings, in prime time, on the road, looking terrible. In reality, perhaps we should be surprised that we expected anything else heading into this game. New year, same old Vikings.
The silver lining about the loss is that it only counts as one loss. And it probably can't get much worse. And we don't have to listen to Trent Dilfer SHOUT EVERY SINGLE WORD ABOUT HOW GREAT COLIN KAEPERNICK AND CARLOS HYDE ARE for the remainder of the season.
Commiserate with us in the comments below. Stay tuned for much more analysis in the coming hours and days.