SANTA CLARA -- After opening last season with nine consecutive losses, the 49ers did not have to wait nearly as long in coach Kyle Shanahan’s second year for their first win.
But just winning a game no longer is good enough -- at least not with veteran cornerback Richard Sherman on the team.
Sherman made it clear Sunday that nobody should be satisfied with the 49ers’ performance after the team held on for a 30-27 victory over the Detroit Lions at Levi’s Stadium.
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“A win’s a win,” Sherman said. “It feels like a loss to me.”
Sherman was not pleased with the performance of the defense, which allowed Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford to throw for 347 yards and three touchdowns. The Lions rallied from 17 points down in the fourth quarter to get back into the game in the closing minutes.
“It’s 30-13 going into the fourth quarter, we got to execute down the stretch,” Sherman said. “Stafford’s a good quarterback. They’re a good team, but we got to execute down the stretch and we got to play better.
“It’s a good learning lesson for a young team that we needed. It’s a humbling lesson. Thank goodness we got the win out of it. There’s a lot of good tape, a lot of good learning for us. I think it’s going to be a humbling experience for a lot of our players.”
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Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo said he likes the perfectionist attitude that Sherman, an eight-year NFL veteran, has brought to the 49ers.
“Sherm has a great mindset,” Garoppolo said. “It’s a good thing. I was just talking to some of the guys. It’s a different mindset than last year. Last year, if we got a win, we were happy about it. Now, you kind of progress as a team.
“I think our guys are growing and learning like that. When you have a chance like we had to blow them out and take advantage of that stuff, we didn’t. It’s just little things like that we need to clean up.”
The 49ers had ample opportunities to close the door on the Lions but failed to deliver the knockout blow against a team that lost 48-17 to the New York Jets in the season opener Monday night.
“I think it just comes down to mental toughness, having all the guys thinking the same way,” Garoppolo said. “When you get to the opportunity, you’ve got to take advantage of it. It’s a lot of little things coming together. You can’t let human nature take over at that point.”
Shanahan did not equate Sunday’s narrow victory as a loss, but he said he was disappointed the 49ers did not build on their big lead in the fourth quarter.
“A win is a win,” Shanahan said. “I’m extremely excited about that and we’re all happy, but it was extremely frustrating there at the end. I thought we had a chance to completely finish them and put it away.
“We’ll enjoy this the rest of the night, but when we come in tomorrow, we still have work to do and we still have a lot of ways we can improve.”