Agree with almost all of this except for Richard Sherman. I thought once he went to press man coverage shadowing Dez he played fantastic. Romo threw his way a lot. I can only remember two passes being completed on him and one was a perfect jump ball pass to Dez. He had some big tackles later in the game too and was IMO the best game of his season. Losing Max is a big blow, but if it means he has to shadow #1 WR for a few weeks, that makes me excited.
Bevell's desire to not give Marshawn the ball still has me scratching my head. Couple that with not passing to Harvin beyond the LOS once and I don't know what the plan here was. Brian Walters was frequently in at the end of the game with Harvin on the sidelines. Pete needs to take a serious look at the play calling. I can remember three times where we ran empty set out of shotgun on 2nd and then 3rd down, allowing the defense to know we were passing. Our WR already have a hard time getting separation on their own, letting them know we are passing just makes it unfair. We were never losing by more than a touchdown, so it's not like we needed to air it out. Marshawn should have run the ball 30 times or more.
Our defense has legitimate problems. The long third down conversions are unacceptable, especially for how they got them. Like you said, I think our Cover 3 has been figured out. We made changes at half time which was good to see and we slowed their running game down until the last drive they scored on, which was not good to see. They just seem to be playing without the fire they had last year. It wasn't until a few big tackles in the 3rd quarter that guys were jumping around, pushing each other, and looking like the defense that smacked the Broncos around in the Superbowl. We might need to go back to how we played last year, accept a few more penalties, and get back to pushing teams around.
Special teams continues to be fantastic.