By Morris Phillips

Colin Kaepernick looked confident and capable. The 49ers’ offense as a whole played better. And the Sunday night national television audience got treated to a whale of a football game.

But the 49ers’ defense was powerless as Eli Manning and the Giants marched down the field for a game-winning touchdown with just 21 seconds remaining. Now after a heart breaking 30-27 loss, the team finds itself in a 1-4 hole that’s almost impossible to climb out of.

Did we mention that Colin looked confident? Well, he really did.

“He did a great job. I’m proud of him, the way he bounced back after a tough week,” Torrey Smith said of his quarterback.

“It just looked like he was having fun,” Anquan Boldin noted. “He was himself. And that’s what I’m used to seeing.”

Could it just be that franchise quarterbacks burdened by multi-million dollar contracts and hindered by expectations are acutely sensitive to public sentiment? It could be, but you certainly didn’t hear that from Kaepernick himself.

“No,” Kaep responded when asked if he was feeling the pressure this week due to the backlash of three, subpar performances. “To me, I have to go back out and play football. It’s a game at the end of the day. It’s not life or death.”

Consider Kaep’s outing to be progress like running through South of Market and entering Hayes Valley on your way to Ocean Beach during a Bay to Breakers race. Kaepernick completed 23 of 35 passes for 264 yards, no picks and he ran just three times, executing Geep Chryst’s gameplan that saw the quarterback attacking downfield, and making plays in the passing game. For the first time in 19 games, a 49ers’ tight end caught a touchdown pass, and the run game featuring Carlos Hyde picked up tremendously after halftime as a result of Kaepernick’s capable passing.

On the other hand, the 49ers settled for a pair of field goals in the first half, and didn’t have any of their first 41 offensive plays result in a touchdown. And once Kaepernick and the offense rallied from a 13-3 deficit in the third quarter to tie the game at 13, and then again in the fourth quarter to tie the game at 20, the defense wilted, allowing Manning to mount a final drive without any of his top three wide outs available and on the field.

It there’s a final step a quarterback must take on his way to being a top-10 NFL signal caller, that step would undoubtedly be mastering the art of leading a red-zone offense with a passer’s pinpoint touch. Manning took that step long ago, and his miraculous throw and catch to Larry Donnell on Sunday in the final seconds was just another example.

On the game-winning play, 49ers’ linebacker NaVorro Bowman found himself in a familiar place, looking to clog any running lanes near the goal line while being responsible for Donnell, the Giants’ rangy, 6’4” tight end, who’s more often than not kept in for protection of the New York running game, while possessing the ability to make a tough catch over a shorter defender, in this case Bowman. The 49ers’ defensive leader reacted beautifully to Donnell, eschewing the run, backpedaling into position and reaching with his right hand for the ball just as Donnell made the catch.

But Donnell amazingly held on in traffic while tapping both feet inbounds. Had Donnell juggled the football at any point, the tight end would have been pushed out of bounds, and the play would have resulted in an incomplete. But that—for the 49ers—how the ball is bouncing right now.

“It seemed like we played a whole game today,” Bowman said. “It seemed like everybody was on it. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy being that we were the visiting team. But I feel like we came out focused, I feel like we played a full, 60-minute game. And I’ll take that one. I’ll put that on me.”

What doomed the 49ers was the inability to defend the pass game, as Manning completed a franchise-record 41 passes on Sunday. That Manning would be so inclined to put the ball in the air, despite missing two and sometimes three of his top targets showed how little regard the Giants and other NFL clubs have for the San Francisco secondary at this point. Needing only to defend running back Shane Vereen as Manning’s only experienced pass target in the final drive, the 49ers couldn’t stop Vereen or any of the other Giants and get off the field.

The Giants won their third straight after opening the season with two losses, while the 49ers fell further into the basement in the NFC West.   On Sunday, the 49ers host the 1-4 Ravens, also desperate to turn things around after losing to the Browns at home in overtime on Sunday.