If you told any San Francisco 49ers fan going into the 2024 season that the team would start 3-3, they would probably panic.
Hell, there are likely many 49ers fans who, even after Thursday’s win over the Seattle Seahawks, still want to freak out faster than DK Metcalf freaks out over the slightest inconvenience.
I am here to tell anyone with itchy panic button fingers to abstain, because context is everything. To put it plainly: No one in the 49ers’ conference, let alone division, should have the Faithful concerned. It might sound nihilistic and anticlimactic to throw up one’s hands and say “LOL, nothing matters” this early in the regular season, but truly, the 49ers’ competition is so bad, and this team is so talented, that they can merely tread water, and it won’t impact their postseason aspirations.
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Let’s start with the division, because winning the NFC West is the 49ers’ ticket into the playoffs, no matter how the rest of the league does.
The 49ers dismantled the Seattle Seahawks in a game that was competitive only because the 49ers’ special teams are perennially atrocious. They should deal with that at some point, but for now, as demonstrated last week, they can overcome this weakness against inferior opponents. And trust me, these NFC West opponents are inferior.
The Seahawks haven’t beaten anyone of note — their three wins came against Bo Nix, Jacoby Brissett and Skylar Thompson — and were clearly out-classed against the Niners. The most optimistic scenario given their remaining schedule is around .500.
The Los Angeles Rams are 1-4, have severe injury issues on offense and are not good enough defensively in the post-Aaron Donald era to compensate for their walking wounded offense. The most optimistic scenario given their remaining schedule is around .500.
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The Arizona Cardinals are 2-4, have a putrid defense and a quarterback who will soon be descending upon “Call of Duty” (which, surprisingly, impacts his statistics way more than you’d expect). The most optimistic scenario given their remaining schedule is around .500.
If “around .500” is the bar for the 49ers to clear, they will do so. They have three wins now and are scheduled to play three more games against the three aforementioned divisional opponents. Yes, they lost to the Cardinals and Rams, but ask any reasonable NFL observer if they would expect the 49ers to lose in a rematch. Barring unexpected injury luck, they would not, because the 49ers still have more blue-chip players than the Cardinals and Rams combined.
San Francisco also has games remaining against a Dallas Cowboys team it has owned in recent seasons, now playing with the worst Dallas defense since 2020; an inconsistent Tampa Bay Buccaneers team that also has a suspect defense; a Miami Dolphins team that may or may not have Tua Tagovailoa; and a Chicago Bears team with a rookie quarterback behind a porous interior offensive line. The Niners are also scheduled to play the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers, two teams they beat in the playoffs last year, as well as a Buffalo Bills team with receivers I’m not even sure Josh Allen knows the names of.
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With that slate, the 49ers should easily be able to get to nine or 10 wins, which should be enough to get them into the postseason. That brings us to the complete mediocrity of the NFC writ large.
The best records in the NFC belong to the Minnesota Vikings and Detroit Lions. Yes, the Vikings bested the 49ers in Week 2, but at some point, Sam Darnold will regress. This Vikings season feels eerily reminiscent of their 2022 season, where their Cinderella-story regular season came crashing down in the postseason once Kevin O’Connell’s ability to elevate Kirk Cousins beyond a mediocre pumpkin wore off when they played the … Daniel Jones-led New York Giants. Sure, their defense is better than 2022, but Darnold is not Cousins.
The Lions nearly beat the 49ers in the playoffs last year but just lost their best defensive player to a devastating injury. Perhaps this column would read differently if that injury never happened, but it did. And at the end of the day, there’s a reason the Rams decided Jared Goff wasn’t the quarterback who could win games in January and February. While the national media loves the good underdog story that is the Detroit Lions, I am under no such obligation. They are a fun team that, come January, I would still not trust to beat a healthy 49ers team — especially without Aidan Hutchinson to tee off on the 49ers’ right tackle turnstyle known as Colton McKivitz.
As for the rest of the NFC? The Packers are maybe OK, but Jordan Love is still good for mind-boggling turnovers that scream “Will Levis” every week. The Philadelphia Eagles barely beat a 1-5 Cleveland Browns team playing such a depressing brand of football that its fan base is convinced the pride of Ohio is JD Vance. The NFC South is a gathering place for cast-off quarterbacks whose prior teams deemed they weren’t the guy, and the Washington Commanders are probably a year or two away from being serious contenders.
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So: The 49ers could lose to the Kansas City Chiefs (again) this week and still be fine in the big picture. They could lose multiple games in November and December and also still be fine.
Consider too that the eventual returns of Christian McCaffrey and Dre Greenlaw could themselves elevate the team back to 2022-2023 regular-season dominance. Both players are extremely valuable to their respective sides of the ball: The putrid red-zone offense will improve when that unit’s best player returns, and the defense will improve once it no longer has to see De’Vondre Campbell Sr. cover anyone of importance.
Of course, if the 49ers sustain more injuries — especially to irreplaceable pieces like Brock Purdy, Trent Williams, Nick Bosa or Fred Warner — this calculus changes. But so long as the team stays reasonably healthy, a large swath of the regular season is irrelevant. The Niners are well-positioned to return to the Super Bowl.
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Are they good enough to finally beat the Chiefs or Ravens in said Super Bowl? Who knows. Will Kyle Shanahan finally be able to manage a fourth-quarter Super Bowl lead? Who knows. But these were questions that would have lingered even if the 49ers started 6-0. Because of how bad their conference and divisional competition is, these questions can still be answered come February despite the 3-3 start.