Will third time against Seattle be a problem for Niners?
The thinking in the NFL is that you don’t beat another team three times in a season. Which means the 49ers might have a problem. Or that whatever people say doesn’t mean as much as how people play.
The first round of the playoffs, a wild card game on Saturday at Levi’s Stadium, will be the third between the Niners and Seahawks. San Francisco won the other two, one at home, one up north.
Sure, the Seahawks may have figured out by now what they must do to beat the Niners, but so what? The personnel hasn’t changed — although the Niners have used two different quarterbacks, so why should the results?
San Francisco has the longest current winning streak in the sport, 10 in a row, topped off Sunday by a 38-13 win over the Arizona Cardinals.
But a rather mortifying 3-4 start to a record that at 13-4 is their best in a long while, left the 49ers a game behind the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC standings.
Philly earned the bye, the week off, which can be a refresher for any athlete who’s been pounding and pounded on since training camp in July. But what matters is qualifying for the tournament, the postseason, and that’s what San Francisco has accomplished.
What any team needs is to be playing its best football in January. The current longest win streak in pro football is an indication that the Niners are doing just that.
Somehow, by planning or fate, the guys who run the league have the ability — or the fortune — to keep us fascinated until the final moments of the final regular season game. That happened Sunday night
Detroit at Green Bay, former Cal quarterback Jared Goff, a No. 1 overall pick, against former Cal quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who should have been a No. 1 overall pick. The game was in the chill at Lambeau Field. The Packers were ahead.
But Goff and the Lions won. The Packers, the probable Niners opponent in the wild card, were done. So perhaps is Rodgers, age 39.
The Niners are far from done. They’ve got the best defense in the NFL — as you’ve been instructed, defense wins. They’ve got a rookie quarterback, Brock Purdy, who barely was drafted and has never lost a game; they once again have their full roster, with Deebo Samuel and Elijah Mitchell back from injuries and running wild.
And they have old mo, momentum.
The knock on the Niners is they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs and beat a lot of lesser teams like the Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams. We’ll see if it matters.
“I don’t know if I’ve had this feeling that I have right now about our team and the opportunity we have to win this thing,” said Niners linebacker Fred Warner. “We have everything we need on this team to do what we need to do.”
He was on the 2019 team that was 13-3 (the sked has since been altered to 17 games) and lost to KC in Super Bowl LIV. Comparisons are difficult, especially after a gap of three years.
Coaches believe in their system and their players but understand their plans can fail with a freak bounce or a bad throw. “It’s a relief,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said of getting to the postseason. “It was a stressful week knowing you needed a win, but you’re thinking about the (playoffs) also. So being able to pull off the win — and being able to rest some guys at the end — was great.”