SEATTLE – About nine minutes after the San Francisco 49ers pushed their lead to 20 points against the Seattle Seahawks on Thursday night, linebacker Fred Warner experienced an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu.

Seattle had just put up fourteen straight points to cut San Francisco’s lead to six and got the ball back to open the fourth quarter.

For a Niners team that had blown a double-digit fourth-quarter lead in losses to the Los Angeles Rams in Week 3 and the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, it was hard not to doubt that it was an NFC West trifecta would be. .

“(A) thousand percent,” Warner said. “It sucks, but yeah, it was something that definitely felt familiar. I’m like, ‘Hey, we can go both ways here. We can stand tall in a hostile environment and get the play that we faced .’ otherwise we can settle for exactly how we played the last few losses.”

This time, despite another round of injuries and an unprecedented repeat of the challenge that set them back, the Niners persevered to put away a 36-24 win they desperately needed.

During the week, the Niners declared Thursday’s game to be the closest to a must-win game you can get in Week 6 of the NFL. A loss would have dropped them to 2-4 overall, 0-3 in the division and 0-4 in the conference. They would have had eleven more games to get back into the mix, but the climb would have been considerably tougher.

The downside, of course, was that a win would push the Niners to 3-3 and into a tie with Seattle at the top of the division, with an early lead against the Seahawks in a potential head-to-head tiebreaker.

“I’ve talked about how some tough losses are harder than others and when you feel like you’ve won them, especially division games, it makes us sick to our stomachs,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “We’ve talked about how these two losses are a reminder of how the NFL works, and I think in that way we’ve become a little bit spoiled by human nature where sometimes we feel too relaxed and you can never relax too much. feel.”

The mere idea of ​​relaxation has been difficult for the Niners to grasp given all they have experienced injury-wise this season. Already without key players like running back Christian McCaffrey (Achilles tendonitis), linebacker Dre Greenlaw (torn Achilles tendon), defensive tackle Javon Hargrave (torn triceps) and safety Talanoa Hufanga (torn ligaments in his wrist), the Niners had more health concerns on Thursday. night.

Cornerback Charvarius Ward worked out in hopes of playing through a knee injury, but was inactive for the game. Rookie safety Malik Mustapha, who started in place of Hufanga, came up with an early interception and then left with what Shanahan called a low ankle sprain. Perhaps most critically, running back Jordan Mason injured his left shoulder in the first half, returned for one carry to open the third quarter and then was available only on an emergency basis for the rest of the game. He finished with 73 yards on nine carries and caught another pass for 9 yards.

Shanahan said Mason will undergo further testing on Friday to determine the severity of the injury.

“He thought it was going to be OK,” Shanahan said. “He went back in and it just hurt him too much, so he went out… We’ll find out more tomorrow.”

As if the injuries weren’t enough, they were also on the wrong end of a replay in which a camera angle ultimately showed fans at home that Seahawks punt returner Dee Williams touched a ball that the Niners would eventually recover at Seattle’s 18. Shanahan told Brian Hampton, the 49ers vice president of football administration, warned him that Williams touched the ball, but when the officials reviewed the play, they had no angle that provided clear evidence. That left the call standing and created frustration on the San Francisco sideline.

Mark Butterworth, the NFL’s vice president of Instant Replay, said after the game that they didn’t see the clear replay where the ball was touched until it was too late to overturn the play.

“Since it was Thursday night football, I thought for sure they would have a lot of camera angles,” Shanahan said. “We threw it because we thought we were going to get better angles, but then they told me we weren’t. And about two minutes later I heard all the guys in the box freaking out and saying they saw a different angle and it was.” a mess.”

As it turned out, that play didn’t matter as the 49ers closed out the game with some help from rookies working in relief roles.

Cornerback Renardo Green, who played more snaps with Ward out, came up with his first career interception midway through the fourth quarter to set up the game-winning 9-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Brock Purdy to tight end George Kittle. Rookie Isaac Guerendo, who replaced Mason, followed suit by nailing a 76-yard run that all but sealed the victory with 1:39 remaining.

“We’ve been in a lot of big games and won a lot of big games,” Kittle said. “We’ve lost some big games, and so we just have experience at the moment… When you have new guys and when they feel the confidence of all the guys who have been there before, they feel like they fit right in and they have that confidence as well. Our team has been in those situations and we’ve done a pretty good job with them, especially here on the road in Seattle.”

While the 49ers can enjoy Thursday’s win for a few more days, it won’t be long before they turn their attention to the next opponent on the schedule: the Kansas City Chiefs. The 49ers have never beaten Kansas City in a regular season or postseason game since Shanahan took over in 2017, including, of course, two Super Bowl losses.

Kansas City is 5-0 and will be even more rested than the Niners coming out of their bye.

Suffice it to say, no one in San Francisco will call it a must-win. But there’s no denying that they want it.

“It’s not like we can get revenge for the Super Bowl loss,” Williams said. “That ship has sailed… Obviously we know what kind of team that is, one of the best teams in the league, an all-star quarterback, a great coach, so it’s going to be a tough game either way. We’re going to take these three days off and regroup and come try to put together a complete game.”