What can we look at to give us (or me) some hope for tomorrow? I changed my Thanksgiving plans last week to travel to Seattle and go to the game with my wife and friends. I understand that there is a severe chance of disappointment, but I’d like to go into tomorrow with at least a bit of positivity. There are others like me and, holy hell, this sub is in a full nosedive.
So, where can we find some strengths against the 49ers? What can we do to get in there and make Brock Purdy and CMC nervous? What historical precedent do we have for something like this?
It’s a division matchup. Everyone knows the craziest shit happens almost always only during those kind of matchups.
Also Purdy has been dogshit against pressure, and the right side of that Oline isn’t looking too good for them. As long as we don’t allow Purdy to make dump off throws/screens (mainly to Kittle and CMC) then our Defense can definitely stop them.
For our Offense, that’s another story. The 49ers secondary is their weak point but it seems like our Offense success is almost always solely on establishing a run game and then bully the defense with playaction. Our Oline without Abe Lucas stands no chance against that Dline and our offense has to either use a lot of TE heavy sets to help on the edge or stay on short passes. I really hope Geno doesn’t try to force it downfield because that has barely worked this season. The only team that’s put on a good offensive performance against the 49ers was the Bengals which seems to have been on the Defense forcing multiple turnovers on the 49ers and having an actual ground game against the 49ers.
Anyway the way we win this has to be through a strong defensive effort. Our offense isn’t good enough right now to have any hope on scoring 28+ points in something like a shootout (except for dumb luck or injuries). If the Defense can stop the 49ers offense and force 1 or more turnovers where we can capitalize on it. I also heard that the 49ers have had their own issues with discipline with their penalties, so as long as we can severely limit the penalties we make (including in important situations) and the 49ers trip over themselves, then we have a very good chance at winning
TLDR: way to win is strong defensive effort, severely limit penalties, have better tackling, force at least 1 turnover, don’t make mistakes on offense and actually score 20+ points this time