The 49ers are technically alive. And, hey, they’re in the playoffs.
That’s good, right?
Right?
So why do they seem so glum?
Yes, the 49ers are down bad, and now they need to channel that negative energy into a win on Sunday in the NFC Wild Card Round against the Eagles.
It’s hard to blame the Niners for the negative vibes: They’re coming off a Week 18 loss to the Seahawks —a game San Francisco treated like a playoff game and were subsequently stomped in. The Niners emptied the tank, but drove in reverse.
It felt like the season was on the line, alongside the No. 1 seed and NFC West crown last Saturday.
It makes the playoffs feel like a loser’s bracket.
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And the Niners have a good chance to win this Sunday.
But it’s impossible to focus on the micro — the Eagles being the ultimate bad-vibes team (with an emotional support bunny to prove it), the fact that Brock Purdy is the better quarterback than Jalen Hurts right now — when the macro screams so loudly: The sheer attrition of the 49ers roster makes winning three road playoff games to reach a Super Bowl a near impossibility.
But the journey back from the depths starts with Sunday’s game.
Here is how I see Sunday playing out, in three predictions:
This will be nasty football
I want to be optimistic. I want to tell you this will be a clash of titans and that great football is on deck. But I would be lying to you. This game is going to be a slog. A mud fest. Two teams trudging uphill, trying not to be the first one to collapse.
Both of these teams are miserable to watch right now. The Eagles’ offense is an exercise in talent overcoming tactical (and quarterback) incompetence.
The 49ers’ defense is going to be starting strangers at linebacker on Sunday.
Perhaps the 49ers’ offense can bounce back and change this paradigm, but the Eagles’ defense is no joke, now. (It’s also not the Seahawks’ defense, so that’s a real positive.)
Expect a game defined not by brilliance, but by who makes fewer catastrophic mistakes. That might be the 49ers!
But either way, it’s going to be ugly, choppy, and frustrating. If you like aesthetic football, look away.
The Eagles hit a back-shoulder fade to A.J. Brown
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Watch for the check around the plus-20 yard line, particularly on first downs. If they see single coverage on the outside (and they will) — specifically against the 49ers’ left corner Renardo Green, who is coming off a woeful game against Seattle — Hurts is going to throw the back-shoulder fade to wide receiver A.J. Brown in the front corner of the endzone.
They do it constantly. Amid all of Philadelphia’s predictable, uninventive plays, this one works, so they use it like a crutch.
The 49ers’ corners have to know it’s coming, but knowing it and stopping Brown from boxing you out are two very different things. Expect Philadelphia to exploit this matchup to overcome its offensive dysfunction. It could prove to be the difference in this game.
Christian McCaffrey can’t do it alone
The Eagles are just healthier. They have more dudes. Coaching mismatch aside, that’s probably the difference in this game.
I know this is the kind of no-nonsense, granular analysis you expect from my column.
The Niners might have the better quarterback in this game and the possibility of the better run game, but if there’s no Ricky Pearsall on the outside and the Niners’ defense doesn’t find something deep inside themselves on the team plane east, those advantages won’t be enough.
Meanwhile, the Eagles, even with their eighth-grade offense, can just throw the ball up to Brown or DeVonta Smith when they see them one-on-one.
Who needs good plays when you have good players?
The Niners don’t have that luxury anymore. They need McCaffrey to have Week 1 juice on his runs and turn what should be large cutback lanes not into six-yard runs but 20-yard chunk plays.
Does he have enough left to carry the entire offense on his back after 413 touches?
And can he show it for all four quarters?
Final Score Eagles 19, 49ers 17
It won’t be a blowout, though you’ll wish it were so you could stop watching it.
The 49ers will hang around because the Eagles are incapable of putting teams away. I think Hurts will run it more than usual and that could be an equalizer of sorts between the quarterbacks.
But in the end, Philadelphia wins a game that sets football back ten years.
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