49ers Jump on Commanders Early: Purdy-to-Kittle and McCaffrey Put San Francisco Up 13-3 on Monday Night

Five games into a perfect start, the San Francisco 49ers are beginning to make the early minutes of games feel like a formality. On Monday night at Levi’s Stadium, San Francisco scored on its opening drive, scored again before Washington had settled in, and took a 13-3 lead over the Washington Commanders late into the second quarter of their Week 6 Monday Night Football matchup. This is a live, first-half report: the game is still in progress, and the score reflects play late in the second quarter, with San Francisco in front 13-3.

The tone was set immediately. Brock Purdy marched the 49ers 64 yards in nine plays over 4:07 on the game’s opening possession and capped it by finding George Kittle wide open for a touchdown and a 7-0 lead. It was the kind of drive that tells you how a coaching staff spent its week: on schedule, balanced, and finished by its tight end standing alone in space. Washington answered with its best moment of the half — Jayden Daniels hitting Terry McLaurin for 27 yards down the right sideline on the Commanders’ opening drive — but the possession stalled and Drew Stevens converted a 51-yard field goal to make it 7-3. That exchange, a touchdown answered by a long field goal, has basically been the story of the half.

Evans, hurting all week, changed the geometry

The second touchdown belonged to Christian McCaffrey from a yard out, but it was built by the most unlikely man on the field. Mike Evans did not practice all week. He was questionable with rib and Achilles issues, in his first season with San Francisco after 12 years in Tampa Bay — and he still produced the half’s biggest play, a 54-yard catch that flipped the field and set up McCaffrey’s one-yard score. The extra point missed, which is how a two-touchdown half reads 13-3 instead of 14-3. Evans had two catches for 78 yards early, a continuation of a season in which he entered Monday leading the 49ers with 24 catches, 326 yards and three touchdowns. Before the game, he arrived at Levi’s wearing a Steph Curry No. 30 Warriors jersey, as the New York Post noted — a Bay Area nod from the new guy, who then played like a headliner.

Purdy’s backing inside the building was made public before kickoff. General manager John Lynch publicly backed his quarterback pregame, ClutchPoints reported — and through a half on Monday, Purdy has played like a man with nothing to prove to his own front office. The 49ers came in 5-0, off wins over Denver and Seattle, and the first half at Levi’s has looked like an unbeaten team treating a national-stage game as a business trip: efficient early, physical at the line, and content to let Washington chase.

The efficiency has been the season-long story. Through San Francisco’s first five games, Purdy completed 69 percent of his passes with 13 touchdowns against just two interceptions, USA Today’s Touchdown Wire noted in its live account of Monday’s game — numbers that sit comfortably behind Lynch’s public vote of confidence. At halftime of game six, the shape of the night fits the shape of the season: the 49ers have not needed volume, trickery or luck. They have needed two drives, one from their quarterback’s right arm to their tight end, one finished by their running back from a yard out, and a defense that has allowed Washington exactly one long field goal for its trouble.

Washington’s half turned on one terrible moment

For the Commanders, the score is not the worst news of the night. McLaurin, whose 27-yard catch fueled Washington’s only scoring drive, left in the first quarter with a non-contact knee injury, was carted off with his left leg in an air cast, and was ruled out for the game. We have the full report on McLaurin’s injury separately; here, it is enough to say that Washington’s comeback path narrowed sharply the moment its No. 1 receiver left, in a game where the Commanders were already underdogs in every sense. They entered 1-3-1, a week after blowing a 14-point fourth-quarter lead and settling for a tie when Daniels was tackled in bounds in overtime as the clock ran out. Their lone win, Week 3 against Seattle, remains the biggest upset of the 2026 season — which tells you both that this team can rise to a night like this and how rarely it has.

What Washington has going for it, down ten with a half to play, is Daniels himself and a defense that has kept this from becoming a rout since the opening two drives. What San Francisco has going for it is everything else: the lead, the home crowd, McCaffrey’s touchdown already banked, and an offense that has scored on the possessions that mattered. The second half will decide whether Monday becomes another line in the 49ers’ unbeaten run or the night Washington’s season found a second gear. Follow the finish on our NFL front, and track both clubs on their team pages — San Francisco and Washington — as the sports desk updates through the night.