Colin Kaepernick was 16-of-34 passing for 143 yards with one touchdown, one interception and a quarterback rating of 56.4 in a Week 7 home loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
"I have to be better," Kaepernick said after the San Francisco 49ers dropped a sixth consecutive game, 34-17. "I think we threw for about 100 yards. That's not going to win in the NFL. We have to be able to do better on that and ultimately, we have to string this together as a team and play well as a team for 60 minutes to get wins."
Kaepernick was sacked four times and rushed for 84 yards on nine carries.
San Francisco got out to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. Kaepernick led the offense on a five-play, 75-yard scoring drive. Following a Tampa Bay turnover, Kaepernick threw a 17-yard touchdown pass on a one-play scoring drive.
"We executed really well on that first drive," the quarterback said. "We got in a rhythm. Everything clicked for us. We got that first, first down and got rolling. We made some good plays."
And afterwards?
"We just got out of sync," the quarterback said. "Once again, it was a situation where early in the game we got into a rhythm, and we lost that and we didn't execute it as well as we did at the beginning later in the game and that's something we have to be able to do a better job of is playing that full 60 minutes and stringing all those plays together."
The 49ers picked up 20 first downs and were 6-of-15 on third-down conversions. The unit finished the game with 273 total yards.
Kaepernick said the team's consistency was not good enough to win.
"On our two touchdown drives, we had players making plays on the field and we have to be able to continually do that throughout the game because defenses are talented," Kaepernick said. "Things are going to be close, and we have to be able to make those plays and that's ultimately what's going to be the difference in these games."
San Francisco heads into the bye week in last place in the NFC West. The 49ers return to action on Nov. 6 against the New Orleans Saints.
"We have to be able to overcome adversity," Kaepernick said. "A lot of times in games, things aren't going to go your way. There's going to be bad plays, things of that nature but you have to be mentally strong enough to say, 'You know what? That's a bad play but we're going to come back from it. We're going to come back and make a play and that's going to be the difference in the game. And that will trump the bad play that happened earlier.'"
This is the first time Kaepernick has been 1-6 in his six-year career. The 49ers haven't been 1-6 since 2010.
"It's not a position we want to be in," the signal-caller said. "We work hard every week, we go through our preparation, we're on top of everything but we have to go out and execute better. Where our record is right now, we have a bye week coming up. We can get some corrections, get some people healthy, come back and try to make a home stretch run."
