© Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports
For the first time since 1998, the San Francisco 49ers are 3-0. That bodes well for their playoff chances, and that’s not something that’s been said in quite some time. The 49ers made the playoffs in that 1998 season, losing 20-18 in the divisional round to the Atlanta Falcons. Even if this 49ers team loses to the Cleveland Browns two Monday nights from now, they’ll be 3-1 for the first time since 2012, when they were on losing end of the Harbaugh Super Bowl.
If you’re wondering how this bodes for San Francisco’s playoff chances, your positive assumptions are correct. Since 1970, the 49ers have made the playoffs five of six times they’ve begun a season 3-0 (1980, when Joe Montana was in his second season and started seven games, is the one exception).
When they’ve gone 3-1, they’ve made the playoffs 18 of 22 seasons (the exceptions being 2009, 1999 – when Steve Young suffered his career-ending injury – 1980 – Montana’s second season – and 1976).
This is not the 49ers team of the past few years. They are, dare I say, good… with a chance to be, as Kwon Alexander likes to say, legendary. The 49ers of seasons past would not have won a down-and-dirty game like Sunday’s 24-20 five-turnover mess of a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
They won that game even when it felt like they took “five steps backwards,” as Kittle said, because the defense secured a pair of clutch turnovers and the offense took advantage of the second one, when Jimmy Garoppolo threw a pass into a tight window and Dante Pettis made one of those tight window, contact catches he’s struggled to make.
“A lot of emotions coming from a game like that,” Kittle said. “We were in a similar game last year versus Arizona where we couldn’t finish it and we ended up blowing it, so it was nice to be able to rely on our defense. We were moving the ball, moving the ball, moving the ball. We were just hurting ourselves left and right, but the team came together in all phases at the end of the game and we finished it.”
What’s different is the fact that the 49ers finally have a top-tier defense. The acquisitions of Dee Ford and Nick Bosa, coupled with an improved Arik Armstead, Ronald Blair, D.J. Jones, Sheldon Day, and the lynchpin of DeForest Buckner have crushed opposing run games and created pressure on the quarterback.
It’s resulted in interceptions every single week, when quarterbacks are pushed out of the pocket and make ill-advised throws into aggressive coverage.
The “Hot Boys” linebacking corps of Fred Warner and Kwon Alexander are active on just about every play, closing run gaps that are left by the line and excelling in coverage.
Richard Sherman and Ahkello Witherspoon are giving opposing receivers hell on almost every play, and the entire secondary has been tremendous in defending the run. Even the flaws, like the youth of free safety Tarvarius Moore taking poor angles to the ball (the main cause of Juju Smith-Schuster’s touchdown), are being outweighed by the dynamism of the rest of the defense.
Turnovers were historically bad a season ago, and now you’d be shocked to see this 49ers defense finish a game without getting the ball in their hands.
And the offense, with a capable starting quarterback in Garoppolo, a reinvigorated offensive line (Joe Staley is obviously hurt, but Mike Person and Weston Richburg are both healthy and look miles improved from last season) and a wheelhouse of not top-tier, but agile and unique running (Matt Breida, Raheem Mostert, Jeff Wilson, Kyle Juszczyk) and receiving (George Kittle, Deebo Samuel, Marquise Goodwin, Dante Pettis, Richie James, Kendrick Bourne) options, has excelled under Kyle Shanahan’s incisive play-calling.
But having the pieces in place doesn’t guarantee success. There’s been a notable shift in mentality within the locker room.
“That’s all we’ve been doing this whole offseason, talking about finishing games, don’t let the ones get away from us,” Kittle said. “We did everything we could in the first half to let it get away from us. That’s what football is, it’s how you respond to adversity and we responded really well at the end… In the huddle, we said, ‘Hey, this is on us, we’re going to finish on our terms and that’s what we did.”
That’s a far cry from Juszczyk’s (who caught three passes for 51 yards) past two seasons with San Francisco.
“I think time and time again, we saw these close games where we didn’t make the play at the end of the game, where we ended up losing by three, losing by one, whatever it was,” Juszczyk said. “So to be able to be on the other end of that was huge.”
Even in a “dogfight” of a game, as Armstead predicted it would be, the 49ers out-slugged their opponent in the way a championship contender will do every season.
“I feel like this team is resilient,” said fullback Kyle Juszczyk, who caught three passes for 51 yards. “There’s confidence in ourselves. Even when things are going bad, we know we can turn things around. I’m so impressed with our defense. I think our defense is so legit and they can play with anybody. Offense, we just have to clean up the turnovers. There’s two ways to look at this game. You could focus on the negatives and all the turnovers, but at the same time, you can look at the positive of wow, we had all those turnovers and we still won this game. Think about if we clean those up.”