Nothing is pretty in Cleveland in the winter.
Least of all the football.
But Cleveland’s nasty weather and even nastier defense didn’t faze the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
It was the perfect setup for a trap game. A short week. A holiday hangover. A roster looking ahead to a desperate, long-awaited bye week. It had “no-fun letdown” written in neon letters across the script.
The Niners didn’t care. They just went out and turned in one of their most professional, sharp performances of a season that has been nothing short of a surprise party.
San Francisco wasn’t flashy in their 26-8 win over the Browns. They weren’t particularly exciting.
But a ninth win is a ninth win.
And in this league, a ninth win in December doesn’t just loom large. It casts a shadow over the entire conference.
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Sunday’s win puts San Francisco squarely in the driver’s seat for the NFC playoffs. The NFL’s own analytics machines are spitting out a playoff probability of 93 percent.
That’s a fancy number for a simple truth: they’d really have to botch this to miss the postseason now. With one-win Tennessee coming to town for Week 15, the Niners likely need just one victory in their final four games to punch their ticket to an 18th game.
Who knows? Maybe the NFC West title—or even the No. 1 seed—is still on the table. Combine Sunday’s business trip in Cleveland with the Rams’ stunning loss in Carolina and the fact that the Bears (who visit in Week 17) are the new top dogs in the conference, and suddenly the ceiling looks a lot higher.
“I think looking from the outside in, if people said you’re going to be 9-4 going into the bye and you’re not going to have Fred Warner or Nick Bosa and [George] Kittle is going to miss five games and Brock [Purdy] is going to miss six, I think a lot of people would have laughed,” Kittle said after Sunday’s game.
Of course they would have. How couldn’t they?
And yet here we are.
The fact that they’re standing here is a testament to the coaching staff and the stars who managed to stay upright. Sure, it helps to play a fourth-place schedule and run through the South divisions — the easiest slate the NFL has churned out in years— but there was ample opportunity for this team to crumble. Even against inferior competition, bad teams find ways to lose.
The Niners didn’t.
Their performance against the Browns was just the latest exhibit of this team’s remarkable resiliency. They did what a playoff team should do — they allowed the Browns to beat themselves and added in a few additional punches for good measure. They made a bad team look awful on Sunday.
(How many head coaches have the Niners gotten fired this season? I think Sunday will mark four.)
It was a redemption game for Brock Purdy. On Monday Night Football, he looked lost and perhaps even injured, tossing three woeful interceptions against the Panthers. Six days later, staring into 30-to-40-mile-per-hour swirling wind gusts, he was ripping throws downfield.
He threw for a touchdown. He rushed for another. It wasn’t a stat-sheet stuffer game, but it was ruthlessly efficient, highly opportunistic, and exactly what was required to win on the road against arguably the best defense in football.
In short, Purdy looked like himself again.
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Purdy made a smart bet on Sunday: rely on the defense and special teams against the Browns. They came through in a big way.
That’s not a bet a quarterback on a middling-quality team can make, but that’s not Purdy’s problem.
“I love where we’re at right now. It’s been a long wait for a bye week — I’ve never had one this late, I don’t know anyone on our team who has,” Kyle Shanahan said. “It’s finally here, mentally and physically, it will be awesome to rest and come back from that with four games to play for a chance to play in the playoffs is everything we could ask for.”
The 49ers are hardly a team without flaws. This season will always be defined by injuries. But for all the belly-aching this team did about its late bye — the natural trade-off for a schedule this soft — the break might be arriving at the exact right moment for this team.
A week off for Purdy’s turf toe could provide what he needs to have a superstar home stretch of the campaign. It could bring middle linebacker Tatum Bethune back into the fold (his replacement of Warner has been levels above Curtis Robinson’s stint). It could give a beleaguered defensive line reinforcements in Sam Okuayinonu and, perhaps even Yetur Gross-Matos.
It could be the refresh button this team needs to spark a December run that could turn into January momentum.
That’s easier said than done, of course. After the Titans in Week 15, the road to the playoffs features three playoff-bound teams in the Colts, the Bears, and the Seahawks.
Smart money would tell the Niners to turn in another businesslike performance after the bye, put 10 wins and a playoff berth in the bag, and hold on until the playoffs.
But if we’ve learned anything about these 49ers, it’s that nothing they do is predictable. They live to confuse.
Media (myself, first and foremost) and fans (don’t pretend you didn’t write off this team at some point) were the first to be fooled.
What’s to say the rest of the NFL isn’t next?
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