49ers' offense goes silent against Seahawks, costing them NFC's No. 1 seed

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — The game started with the San Francisco 49ers unable to generate a single first down in the first quarter. It ended with Brock Purdy on his back after a crushing hit on a fourth-down incompletion.

It wasn't much better in between for the 49ers. An offense that was nearly unstoppable during a six-game winning streak could generate almost nothing against the Seattle Seahawks in a 13-3 loss Saturday night that cost San Francisco a shot at the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs.

“They played good defense and we didn’t execute,” Purdy said. “All these other games were we pulled away and had good points and stats and all that stuff is because we execute on the gritty third downs and stay on the field and then we go and score touchdowns after that. So obviously that’s something we needed to do tonight. We didn’t and the scoreboard shows it.”

Now, instead of getting a bye, home-field advantage and the chance to play the Super Bowl on their home field without taking another trip, the 49ers (12-5) will have to head on the road next week in the wild-card round after falling flat in their biggest game of the season.

San Francisco will get the fifth seed and the chance to play the 8-9 winner of the NFC South in the playoffs if the Rams lose or tie against Arizona on Sunday. The Niners will fall to the sixth seed with a trip to Philadelphia or Chicago if Los Angeles beats the Cardinals.

“We’re ready for it,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “It would have been nice to have a home game here — or both home games — and get a bye. But it is what it is. This team’s been through a lot this year. Now we got to do it the hard way.”

The Niners had put themselves in this position thanks to an offense that helped the team average a league-best 35.7 points during a six-game winning streak that featured back-to-back games with at least 42 points ahead of the showdown against Seattle.

But after thriving against several of the NFL's weaker defenses in recent weeks, San Francisco was outclassed by a Seahawks unit that put heavy pressure on Purdy, shut down Christian McCaffrey and the running game and used sound tackling to eliminate big plays after the catch.

It added up to one of the worst offensive performances for San Francisco in nine seasons under Shanahan, with the three points being the fewest the team scored since a 23-3 loss to Carolina in his debut in 2017 and the 173 yards the fewest ever in a regular-season game.

“Disappointed," tight end George Kittle said. “NFL, you can have a bad game any game. Unfortunately, we decided to have a bad game today. ... Kind of hard to expect to really win a game if we’re not going to score more than three points.”

Purdy finished 19 of 27 for 127 yards with one interception and took three sacks. McCaffrey was held to 23 yards on eight carries and a season-low 57 yards from scrimmage.

Playing without Pro Bowl left tackle Trent Williams and receiver Ricky Pearsall, San Francisco never got into a rhythm on offense. The 49ers started the game with back-to-back three-and-outs and then got stopped on fourth-and-1 on the next drive after finally getting a first down.

The Niners got a late field goal in the first half and only trailed 10-3 at the break, but nothing changed in the second half with the team punting for a third time — one more than in three games combined in December — after failing to reach midfield on the opening drive of the third quarter.

San Francisco's best chance to reach the end zone came early in the fourth quarter when it drove to the 6 and was in position to cut into a 10-point deficit. But a pass by Purdy was tipped at the line and bobbled by McCaffrey into Drake Thomas' hands for what was essentially a game-sealing interception.

“It’s a play I have to make, absolutely have to make,” McCaffrey said. “I expect nothing less but to make that play and it’s completely on me.”

The Seahawks killed more than eight minutes on the ensuing drive and the 49ers' last chance ended when Purdy was drilled by Derick Hall on a failed fourth-down pass to Kittle. Purdy was down on the turf for a bit before finally walking off the field gingerly with a stinger that Shanahan said wouldn't have kept him out of the game.

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San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle, right, is tackled Seattle Seahawks safety Ty Okada (39) during the second half of an NFL football game in Santa Clara, Calif., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

Seattle Seahawks linebacker Drake Thomas, right, intercepts a pass intended for San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey, left, during the second half of an NFL football game in Santa Clara, Calif., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) walks off the field after an NFL football game against the Seattle Seahawks in Santa Clara, Calif., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, bottom, reacts after being sacked by Seattle Seahawks defensive tackle Jarran Reed, middle, during the second half of an NFL football game in Santa Clara, Calif., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn)

NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.

The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.

As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.

Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.

“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."

To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.

“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”

Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.

“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”

For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.

Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.

During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.

Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.

“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”

A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.

Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.

A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.

“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.

Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.

Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”

Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.

Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.

“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.

When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.

In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.

Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.

Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."

In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.

State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.

Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.

“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”

He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.

Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."

The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.

“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”

FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)