49ers notebook: Win over Rams improves shot at first-round bye
The 49ers didn’t require a win Saturday over the Rams to clinch the NFC West, but they might have needed it to get a first-round bye in the playoffs.
Of course, San Francisco controls its destiny with a win next week against the Seattle Seahawks. But the 49ers had to play the Rams first in a pivotal game for postseason seeding.
The 49ers escaped with a win Saturday, giving them a 12-3 record heading into the final week. A win in Seattle would wrap up the No. 1 seed in the NFC (and the NFC West crown), which would be accompanied by a first-round bye and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
But that may not have been possible had San Francisco fallen to L.A.
With their fourth loss, the team may have been looking up at the Saints and Packers, who also entered the weekend at 11-3. The 49ers hold tiebreakers over those two teams because they won recent head-to-head matchups, though they would have been moot had San Francisco won the NFC West but had a worse record.
The Packers finish with road games against the Vikings and Lions. New Orleans also has road contests against Tennessee and Carolina.
A bye could be imperative for San Francisco given the health of key players — and because the team hasn’t had a real break since Week 4 all the way back in late September.
They’ll have played 13 straight weeks after the next game. The only respite was a so-called “mini bye” when they had 11 days between the Thursday night Halloween game in Arizona and the Monday night loss to the Seahawks weeks 9 and 10.
“I think that’d be huge,” fullback Kyle Juszczyk said Saturday. “I think anybody’s looking for that first-round bye, because it’s such an advantage to have a healthy squad and rolling to the playoffs at full strength. So I feel like that’s pretty big for us.”
The 49ers are far from full strength. They played Saturday without pass rusher Dee Ford, who missed his fourth game in five weeks with a hamstring injury while the pass rush has taken a noticeable dip.
San Francisco didn’t sack Jared Goff on Saturday and has just three sacks the last four games combined. The 49ers averaged four per game in their first 11.
Ford’s presence off the edge provides a noticeable boost even while his playing time has been limited because of knee tendinitis. He has 6.5 sacks despite appearing in more than 40 percent of the snaps in three of 11 contests.
Additionally, Richard Sherman came into the game with a Grade 2 hamstring strain that caused him to miss last week against Atlanta. Nick Bosa was sporting tape on his right ankle he initially sprained back in training camp and has been playing far more snaps the team anticipated entering the season.
Linebacker Kwon Alexander, on injured reserve with a torn pectoral, is working to get back in time for the postseason. A bye wouldn’t hurt in his case, either.
“You would always love the first-round bye, without a doubt,” coach Kyle Shanahan said Saturday. “You always would like two games instead of three to get to the big one and you’d always like to rest your guys if you could.”
The last six Super Bowl winners all had first-round byes. The last team to win a title while playing in the Wild Card round was the Ravens after the 2012 season by beating the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII.
“Everyone has done it every way possible, so you never know which way is going to be the best way until the season is over then you can have hindsight,” Shanahan said. “I think (the bye) is what everyone goes for, but if that doesn’t happen we’ll be excited with whatever situation we’re in.”
But the need for a first-round bye isn’t being felt by everyone. There’s a sense that a bye could slow momentum and take away from the weekly routine that comes with playing in big games.
“I don’t think we need a bye. I just want to keep playing at home,” right tackle Mike McGlinchey said as a loss to Seattle next week means the 49ers wouldn’t get any postseason games at Levi’s Stadium.
“Our crowd has become a weapon for us. The Faithful have showed up and showed out the last 16 weeks we’ve been doing this. I think playing here, being in our own routine, would be a huge advantage. We don’t want off time. We’re in the nitty-gritty part of the season. We want to play football and we want to win the rest of our games.”
49ers accomplish rare feat in late win
San Francisco converted a pair of third-and-16s on their final drive to win the game on Robbie Gould’s 33-yard field goal as time expired.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was only the second time in the last 40 seasons a team converted multiple third- or fourth-down attempts at least 15 yards on a game-winning drive.
The first was an 18-yard completion from Jimmy Garoppolo to Kendrick Bourne. The second was the 46-yard heave to Emmanuel Sanders that got the team inside Gould’s range.
The 49ers had previously failed on their last 50 consecutive such attempts, a scenario in which Shanahan said is converted less than 10 percent of the time throughout the league.
“Usually it’s such a low percentage that you don’t really try on third-and-16 much,” Shanahan said. “Usually you just try to survive the down and get half of it and punt. But, we were in a situation that we didn’t have that and I think we struggled on third down most of the day.”
To Shanahan’s point, San Francisco converted just 2 of 8 attempts (25 percent) before their back-to-back long conversions on the final series. They entered the weekend sixth in the NFL converting 45 percent of their third downs.
▪ Daniel Brunskill, who had a strong run replacing Mike McGlinchey at right tackle during the first half of the season, got the start at right guard Saturday as starter Mike Person had been dealing with a neck injury from last week’s game against the Falcons. Person was active but did not play.
Brunskill made a strong block of Aaron Donald on Raheem Mostert’s second-quarter touchdown. However, the Rams sacked Garoppolo six times while the 49ers were without two of their five starters in Person and center Weston Richburg, who’s out for the year with a torn right patellar tendon in his knee.
▪ Running back Matt Breida, who was active, didn’t get a carry. He had been dealing with an ankle injury before returning to two weeks ago and fumbled last week against the Seahawks. San Francisco averaged 5.2 yards per carry en route to finishing with 119 yards on the ground.
▪ The 49ers lost backup safety Tarvarius Moore to a concussion when he sandwiched a Rams punt returner in the fourth quarter on a big hit with Emmanuel Moseley. Moore was the only player mentioned by Shanahan during his injury update following the game.
This story was originally published December 22, 2019 at 12:51 AM.
