The 49ers Sat the Whole Team and Lost to Tennessee, the Raiders Played Their Starters and Got Beat at Home, and Only One of Those Is Fine

Preseason week one: Shanahan dressed nobody you've heard of and lost 19-13, Kurtis Rourke and De'Zhaun Stribling made the night watchable anyway, and in the desert the Raiders played Cousins and the No. 1 pick and still got run out of their own building.

Preseason football is back, which means it's time for the annual exercise where we all watch a game that doesn't count, played by guys fighting for the bottom of the roster, and pretend we can be normal about it. The 49ers lost 19-13 to Tennessee on Thursday night at Levi's, and I want to be very clear about how little the scoreboard matters, because Kyle Shanahan sat everybody. Not "rested a few veterans." Everybody. No Purdy, no Kittle, no McCaffrey, no Bosa, no Warner. If a name on the back of a jersey has ever been on a jersey anybody bought, that man was in a hoodie on the sideline.

And thank God for that. Have you seen the injury list? This roster is being held together with athletic tape and one-year deals. Twenty guys have missed practice at various points this month, the running back room got gutted in a single Monday, and the season opens on the other side of the planet in four weeks. The absolute last thing I needed on a Thursday in August was Christian McCaffrey taking a live tackle in a game that means nothing. Tennessee played their starters. Their first-team offense marched 95 yards on our third string for a touchdown on the opening drive, Tony Pollard walked in, and I felt nothing. That's what a preseason opener between a team playing its guys and a team hiding its guys looks like, and Shanahan hiding his guys is the correct call every single time.

Now the part I actually enjoyed, because there was one. Kurtis Rourke was legitimately good. The kid went 12-of-14 for 101 yards, led the touchdown drive that Patrick Taylor Jr. finished from a yard out, and looked calm doing it, and then left with a rib injury, because this is the 49ers and nobody is allowed to have a clean night, not even the third quarterback in a game that doesn't count. 12-of-14. In his first real audition. If the ribs are fine, that's the most interesting quarterback development of the summer that doesn't involve the starter chasing a passer-rating record.

And De'Zhaun Stribling keeps doing it. Seven catches, 63 yards, and the play of the night for our side, a 32-yard catch on third-and-five when the drive was about to die. Everything we've been yelling about since camp opened showed up under actual stadium lights: the hands, the routes, the fact that he's simply open all the time. The camp hype train has left the station and I'm driving it. Jordan Watkins quietly went 6-for-59 on ten targets too, which means the two youngest receivers on the field were the two best 49ers on the field, and given what this receiver room has been through this summer, that isn't a small thing.

The rest of the night was preseason mush, and honest mush at that. We moved the ball, 322 yards, 22 first downs, and finished nothing, going 9-of-19 on third down and settling for Eddy Pineiro field goals from 41 and 52. Adrian Martinez was fine in relief, 16-of-30 for 159, more mobile than accurate. The defense spent the second half living in Will Levis's backfield, with Tatum Bethune and our new friend Ogbo Okoronkwo both getting home for sacks. Backups losing to backups by six while the actual team watches in street clothes is the best possible version of a preseason loss. Moving on.

Meanwhile, in the desert, the franchise that abandoned Oakland had itself a night. The Raiders played their starters, actually played them, Kirk Cousins and the No. 1 overall pick and all, in Klint Kubiak's head coaching debut, at home, in front of their own fans, and lost 27-14 to the Arizona Cardinals. They scored 14 points in the first half and then got blanked after halftime in their own building. I need everyone in the Bay to sit with that for a second. We sat our entire team and lost by six. They played Cousins, who went 5-of-6 with a touchdown to Michael Mayer, they played Fernando Mendoza, who went 10-of-16 for 96 and hit Jack Bech for a score, they got a 53-yard stiff-arm highlight run from rookie Mike Washington Jr., and they still couldn't hold serve at home against the Cardinals. That's the most Raiders result imaginable: the highlights go viral, the scoreboard says you lost by 13.

And look, Mendoza is going to be fine, which is the depressing part for them, the kid looked more comfortable than anything they ran out there last season, and it didn't matter, because the team around the quarterback is still the team around the quarterback. Some franchises sit their stars in August because the season has real stakes. Some franchises play their stars in August because August is the season. I'll let you decide which one just moved to Las Vegas. This is, after all, the city we swore we'd never forgive.

So the ledger after week one of fake football: a loss that cost us nothing, a rib X-ray that better come back clean, two young receivers who look like actual players, and a rival that keeps finding new rock bottoms with a better roster than they deserve. The schedule hub says Melbourne is in four weeks. The season preview says what this team is supposed to be. Nothing that happened Thursday changed either one, which is exactly what you want from a preseason opener. The rest of the coverage is on the 49ers hub.

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