49ers vs. Seahawks: Mike Evans and Brock Purdy Survive Seven-Turnover Chaos to Stay Perfect in Week 5

Seven turnovers. An ejection. A defensive touchdown with 13 seconds left in the half. A Seattle kicker who could not miss. For three quarters at Lumen Field, the NFC West's marquee rivalry looked like a blooper reel with a playoff budget, and then Mike Evans decided he was done watching.

The San Francisco 49ers beat the Seattle Seahawks 32-29 on Sunday afternoon, with Brock Purdy steering two fourth-quarter scoring drives and Eddy Pineiro drilling a 44-yard field goal with 1:56 left. San Francisco is 5-0. The defending Super Bowl champions are 3-2, and their final shot died a yard short of the sticks.

A First Half Built Entirely on Gifts

Nobody needed a long field early, because nobody was given one. Renardo Green picked off Sam Darnold on Seattle's opening possession, handing the 49ers the ball at the Seattle 18, and four plays later Purdy found Evans for a 2-yard touchdown. Seattle returned the favor when Jacob Cowing muffed a punt that Eric Saubert pounced on at the San Francisco 24, and Emanuel Wilson scored from 2 yards out.

Jason Myers put Seattle ahead 10-7 with a 49-yarder. Then Fred Warner punched the ball out of Wilson's arms, Malik Mustapha recovered at the 12, and Christian McCaffrey needed exactly one snap to cover the last 11 yards. The same quarter delivered the day's ugliest moment: linebacker Dre Greenlaw was ejected after a late hit on a scrambling Darnold escalated into a sideline confrontation and a head-butt of Ernest Jones IV.

Myers hit from 50 to make it 14-13, and then Seattle got greedy. The Seahawks spent all three timeouts on defense to get the ball back, a punt pinned them at their own 4 with 18 seconds left, and on the next snap rookie Gracen Halton ripped the ball from George Holani and fell on it in the end zone. A possession meant to steal points sent San Francisco into halftime up 21-13.

"We want to stay aggressive," coach Mike Macdonald said. "We got to be able to execute our run game and hold onto the football."

Seattle owned the third quarter on the scoreboard anyway. Green intercepted Darnold again on the first series of the half, Pineiro pushed a 52-yard try wide left, and Myers made it 21-16. Nehemiah Pritchett then picked off Purdy and returned it 20 yards to the San Francisco 23, and Darnold hit Jaxon Smith-Njigba for a 16-yard score and a 23-21 lead. Deebo Samuel Sr. lost a fumble on the next series and left with a hamstring injury, and Myers' 48-yarder pushed it to 26-21.

Mike Evans Plays Like a Cheat Code

Evans finished with seven catches for 113 yards and a touchdown on 10 targets, and the 49ers' site noted that his opening score was the 111th receiving touchdown of his career, tying Tony Gonzalez for ninth-most in NFL history. He also caught the 2-point conversion that put San Francisco up three.

"I do feel like I'm one of the best receivers in the game," Evans said. "I got a big frame, so if you throw it around me, I'm going to do my best to try to make those contested grabs."

Purdy's line (19 of 29, 189 yards, two touchdowns, one interception) hides how lopsided his day was; the AP noted almost all of his production came in the fourth quarter. "He's a game changer," Purdy said of Evans, who signed with the 49ers in March.

"There were some ups and downs, by no means was everything perfect," coach Kyle Shanahan said. "But I thought he was really good in the fourth quarter."

The defense carried the first half. Green had two interceptions, Halton turned his first career sack into a warm-up act for his first career touchdown, and Warner piled up 10 tackles. For Seattle, Byron Murphy II added two sacks and Smith-Njigba caught five balls for 102 yards.

Second-and-21 and the Catch That Flipped Everything

San Francisco took over at its own 26, down 26-21 with 3:02 left in the third quarter, and opened with an offensive pass interference flag. Didn't matter. Purdy kept throwing Evans' way, hitting him for 15, then 9, then 23 to the Seattle 26. An intentional grounding penalty shoved the Niners into second-and-21, the kind of spot that usually ends in a punt.

Instead Purdy lofted one down the right side and Evans went and took it, 28 yards to the Seattle 9. Two plays later, Brandin Cooks caught a 7-yard touchdown, Evans hauled in the conversion and San Francisco led 29-26. Evans had four catches for 75 yards on the 12-play, 74-yard march.

Seattle answered with a 39-yard Rashid Shaheed kickoff return and a 40-yard Myers field goal to tie it. Then McCaffrey ripped off runs of 8 and 13 yards, Kaelon Black added an 11-yarder, and Pineiro made it 32-29. Darnold hit Smith-Njigba for 35 yards to midfield, but Smith-Njigba could not hang onto a third-down ball, and on fourth-and-10 Mustapha dropped Cooper Kupp one yard short. Replay agreed.

"We had an opportunity to go down there and win the game," Smith-Njigba said. "I have to reel those ones in. I know that."

Numbers From a Very Weird Afternoon

• 7: combined turnovers, an NFL season high, per the AP. Seattle coughed up four of them.
• 5-for-5: Myers on field goals, good for 17 of Seattle's 29 points.
• 24 yards: the longest Seattle touchdown drive. Both Seahawks touchdowns came off short fields.
• 5: sacks of Darnold, who threw two picks and finished with a 64.6 passer rating.

Revenge, Served Lukewarm but Served

The AP pointed out that Seattle beat the 49ers twice late last season, including a 41-6 divisional-round rout of a short-handed roster, and that San Francisco failed to score a touchdown in its final two games against Seattle. On Sunday the Niners got there three times before halftime, even if one trip came courtesy of a defensive lineman.

"That's what we expected, honestly," Warner said. "It was going to be a heavyweight bout. Seattle, they're the guys who won it all last year and they're ones that you have to go through."

San Francisco has now beaten the Rams, Dolphins, Cardinals, Broncos and Seahawks, and it hosts Washington on Monday, Oct. 19. Seattle's two losses have come by a combined five points, small comfort before a Thursday night trip to Denver.

Perfect Does Not Have to Be Pretty

This one had the structure of a sitcom episode: twenty minutes of everything going wrong for everybody, then a tidy resolution right before the credits. The 49ers are not winning beauty contests. They are winning games, and in a division where the champ just blinked, that is the only stat that matters.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN and 49ers.com. Postgame quotes as reported by the Associated Press.