Finally, the rematch everyone in the NFL has been waiting for arrives. Eagles vs Niners. The Niners players in particular have really waited for this game. They did the thing you are not supposed to do and talked more trash after they lost. Of course, the reason they lost last time had nothing to do with who was the better team. No despite being blown out, they would have won if Brock Purdy stayed healthy.
If we are sick of hearing about it, I have to imagine the Eagles players are sick of it too. They are doing a great job staying professional and not feeding into the toxicity from the Niners. But I find it hard to believe James Bradberry gets no extra motivation from Deebo Samuel calling him trash.
But with all that said, this is a good team. The 49ers are capable of putting up big points and have a pretty good defense to go with it. There is a reason why they are 2nd in point differential. They have blown out a lot of teams this year. And not just bad teams like the Cowboys keep running up the score on. The 49ers have blown out teams like the Cowboys and Jaguars.
They do have one flaw though, close games. If they aren’t putting up crooked numbers, and the game gets close, they struggle to pull out wins. They are 1-2 in 1-score games. And while having only played in 3 one score games says a lot about how good they are, losing two of those 3 games says a lot about some of the issues they have.
And Rob “Stats” Guerra, who covers the 49ers, echoed similar sentiments when he joined the John Kincade Show this week.
“When they are trailing by 3 points or more going into the 4th quarter, I think they have 1 win in the Kyle Shanahan era. So as much as I would like to think that the Niners could come back, how can I argue otherwise when there is an overwhelming sample size in year 7 of Shanahan.”
So the key to beating the Niners may just be to keep it close. It is easier said than done though. And the 49ers have a lot of players that contribute to how many blowout wins they have this year.
Here are 6 Niners players who could give the Eagles trouble on Sunday:
