Nothing is fairly in Cleveland within the winter.
Least of all of the soccer.
However Cleveland’s nasty climate and even nastier protection didn’t faze the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
It was the proper setup for a lure sport. A brief week. A vacation hangover. A roster waiting for a determined, long-awaited bye week. It had “no-fun letdown” written in neon letters throughout the script.
The Niners didn’t care. They only went out and turned in one in every of their sharpest, {most professional} performances of a season that has been nothing wanting a shock celebration.
The 49ers weren’t flashy of their 26-8 win over the Browns. They weren’t notably thrilling.
However a ninth win is a ninth win.
And on this league, a ninth win earlier than December doesn’t simply loom massive. It casts a shadow over all the convention.
What if the Niners aren’t the chasing crew, however, in truth, the crew being chased?
Sunday’s win places San Francisco squarely within the driver’s seat for the NFC playoffs. The NFL’s personal analytics machines are spitting out a playoff likelihood of 93 p.c.
That’s a flowery quantity for a easy fact: They’d actually should botch this to overlook the postseason now. With one-win Tennessee coming to city for Week 15, the Niners seemingly want only one victory of their last 4 video games to punch their ticket to an 18th sport.
Who is aware of? Possibly the NFC West title—and even the No. 1 seed—continues to be on the desk. Mix Sunday’s enterprise journey in Cleveland with the Los Angeles Rams’ beautiful loss in Carolina, and out of the blue the ceiling seems to be so much greater. The 49ers have only one extra loss than the brand new prime canine within the convention, the shocking Chicago Bears (who go to Levi’s Stadium in late December).
“I think looking from the outside in, if people said you’re going to be 9-4 going into the bye and you’re not going to have Fred Warner or Nick Bosa and (George) Kittle is going to miss five games and Brock (Purdy) is going to miss six, I think a lot of people would have laughed,” Kittle mentioned after Sunday’s sport.
After all they might have. How couldn’t they?
And but right here we’re.
The truth that they’re standing here’s a testomony to the teaching workers and the celebrities who managed to remain upright. Certain, it helps to play a fourth-place schedule and run by means of the NFC and AFC South divisions — the best slate the NFL has churned out in years— however there was ample alternative for this crew to crumble. Even in opposition to inferior competitors, dangerous groups discover methods to lose.
The Niners didn’t.
Their efficiency in opposition to the Browns was simply the most recent exhibit of this crew’s exceptional resiliency. They did what a playoff crew ought to do: They allowed the Browns to beat themselves and added in a couple of further punches for good measure. They made a foul crew look terrible on Sunday.
(What number of head coaches have the Niners gotten fired this season? I believe Sunday will mark 4.)
It was a redemption sport for Purdy. On Monday Evening Soccer, he appeared misplaced and even perhaps injured, tossing three woeful interceptions in opposition to the Panthers. Six days later, staring into swirling wind gusting at greater than 30 miles per hour, he was ripping throws downfield.
He threw for a landing. He rushed for an additional. It wasn’t a stat-sheet stuffer sport, but it surely was ruthlessly environment friendly, extremely opportunistic and precisely what was required to win on the highway in opposition to arguably the very best protection in soccer.
In brief, Purdy appeared like himself once more.
“Coming in here against a great defense like that, in the conditions like that, it comes down to protecting the ball,” Purdy mentioned.
Purdy made a sensible guess on Sunday: Depend on the protection and particular groups in opposition to the Browns. They got here by means of in an enormous manner.
That’s not a guess a quarterback on a middling crew could make, however that’s not Purdy’s downside.
“I love where we’re at right now. It’s been a long wait for a bye week — I’ve never had one this late, I don’t know anyone on our team who has,” coach Kyle Shanahan mentioned. “It’s finally here, mentally and physically, it will be awesome to rest and come back from that with four games to play for a chance to play in the playoffs is everything we could ask for.”
The 49ers are hardly a crew with out flaws. This season will all the time be outlined by accidents. However for all of the belly-aching this crew did about its late bye — the pure tradeoff for a schedule this tender — the break could be arriving on the precise proper second for this crew.
Every week off for Purdy’s turf toe may present what he must have a celebrity house stretch of the marketing campaign. It may convey center linebacker Tatum Bethune again into the fold. (His alternative of Warner has been ranges above Curtis Robinson’s stint.) It may give a beleaguered defensive position reinforcements in Sam Okuayinonu and even perhaps Yetur Gross-Matos.
It may very well be the refresh button this crew must spark a December run that might flip into January momentum.
That’s simpler mentioned than carried out, after all. After the Titans in Week 15, the highway to the playoffs options three playoff-bound groups within the Colts, the Bears, and the Seahawks.
Good cash would inform the Niners to show in one other businesslike efficiency after the bye, put 10 wins and a playoff berth within the bag and maintain on till the playoffs.
But when we’ve discovered something about these 49ers, it’s that nothing they do is predictable. They dwell to confuse.
Media (myself, firstly) and followers (don’t faux you didn’t write off this crew in some unspecified time in the future) had been the primary to be fooled.
What’s to say the remainder of the NFL isn’t subsequent?
