The points could be at a premium Sunday when the 49ers square off against the Houston Texans in Week 8.
San Francisco owns one of the top offenses in the league in yards gained, but it is tied for 24th in scoring at 20.7 points per game. Houston’s defense leads the NFL allowing just 14.7 points per game.
Each team will have a challenge when it comes to protecting their quarterback and avoiding turnovers.
Here are five 49ers who must play pivotal roles in order to avoid those kinds of mistakes or generate big plays and escape Houston with a victory:
LT Trent Williams
At 37, 49ers left tackle Trent Williams still is regarded as one of the best in the business. He has surrendered two sacks on the season but clearly still is the 49ers’ best offensive lineman.
Williams will face a stiff challenge on Sunday, as he goes up against a defensive end he knows very well.
Houston’s Danielle Hunter regularly has worked out with Williams since Hunter entered the NFL in 2015 as a third-round draft pick of the Minnesota Vikings. They have trained together and compared notes to help each other in their particular disciplines.
Hunter is a perennial double-digit sack producer. He has 78 sacks in his last 96 games since 2018. There will be no surprises for Williams or Hunter, so it should be an intriguing one-on-one matchup to watch.
LB Tatum Bethune
Replacing All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner is just not a one-week deal. Warner is out for the season, and second-year player Tatum Bethune is going to face challenge after challenge after challenge for the remainder of the season.
“You can’t take a deep breath,” 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh said. “You’ve got to step on the gas and keep doing it over and over and over again. This league is a proving ground week-in and week-out.”
Bethune played well in his first NFL start, registering 10 tackles in a 20-10 victory over the Atlanta Falcons. The 49ers managed to continue to be explosive against Falcons running back Bijan Robinson.
Houston offensive coordinator Nick Caley this week said he wants to get the team’s run game going with Nick Chubb, who was underutilized on Monday night against the Seattle Seahawks. Chubb has 265 yards and two touchdowns on 63 rushing attempts on the season.
RB Christian McCaffrey
Coming off his NFC Offensive Player of the Week performance, running back Christian McCaffrey can be expected to once again get a lot of touches as a runner and a receiver. And he will unquestionably be the main focus of the Texans’ defense.
Through seven games, McCaffrey has been playing as well as anybody in the NFL. Although he is averaging just 3.5 yards per rushing attempt, he has 465 yards and three touchdowns on the ground while adding 53 catches for 516 yards and three touchdowns in the passing game.
McCaffrey has seven consecutive games with 50 yards or more receiving. That is the longest streak for a running back to open a season in NFL history. He became the first running back to reach 50 yards receiving in a game in seven straight games since he did it in 2019, a year in which he had 1,000 yards rushing and 1,000 yards receiving.
DE Sam Okuayinonu
The 49ers will take the field Sunday without their three best defensive ends.
Nick Bosa is out for the season after sustaining a torn ACL in Week 3. Bryce Huff and Yetur Gross-Matos are out with hamstring injuries.
Even with a depleted group of pass-rushers, the 49ers need to be able to generate pressure against a porous Houston offensive line.
Quarterback C.J. Stroud struggles against pressure, and the 49ers must find ways to rattle him.
Okuayinonu, who has one sack on the season, is the 49ers’ best bet to generate a pass rush from the outside so Saleh does not feel the necessity to dial up a ton of blitzes to pressure Stroud.
QB Mac Jones
The 49ers will take the field for the sixth time this season without starting quarterback Brock Purdy, who remains out of action with a lingering toe injury.
Mac Jones might face his most-difficult challenge, yet. The Texans are not fancy on defense. They will not play a lot of different coverages and try to confuse Jones. They will play cover-3 and try to overwhelm the 49ers with their young, dynamic defensive personnel.
Jones must take care of the football and avoid sacks to prevent giving the Texans’ offense any easy scoring opportunities. He will have to sense pressure and get rid of the ball quickly, even if it means merely throwing it away.
On the season, Jones has completed 130 of 194 pass attempts (67 percent) for 1,404 yards with six touchdowns, four interceptions and a passer rating of 89.8. He has taken 12 sacks, and must do his part to avoid negative yards.