Why the San Francisco 49ers Fans Should Already Feel Like Winners vs. the Saints

The San Francisco 49ers are two wins from reaching the Super Bowl. Before moving forward, let’s take a moment to digest the stupefying improbability of that statement.

Imagine that, much like in "The Hangover," you were blacked out for the last three months and just woke up in time to see the 49ers preparing to host the New Orleans Saints in the second round of the playoffs.

You'd assume that all the NFL teams outside of San Francisco had contracted that bird-pig flu thing from Contagion, or at the very least that San Francisco had traded for some combination of Tom Brady and the 1989 edition of Jerry Rice.

The fact that Jim Harbaugh has reversed the franchise's decade-long decay without any of these drastic occurrences is simply unreal, and regardless of what happens on Saturday, this 49ers season has to be considered among the most unexpected and amazing in Bay Area sports history.

While asking for more from this team (which long ago shattered the ceiling of even the most delusional preseason predictions) borders upon being greedy, I fully expect the 49ers to win this weekend.

The reason for these lofty expectations is a favorable matchup and the new reality Harbaugh has created in 49ers-land.

The Saints are an electrifying but flawed football team. Think of them like the helmeted version of the Golden State Warriors, or more fairly the Mike D'Antoni-led Suns. It's an exciting style to watch and, when the conditions are right, they are virtually unbeatable.

But as any long-suffering Suns or Dubs fan will tell you, when that uber-offensive style meets a physical opponent who slows the game down and doesn't make mistakes, the result isn’t a championship.

The 49ers stack up as the kryptonite to the Saints' Super Offense. San Francisco is historically good at avoiding turnovers, with two all-pro middle linebackers to slow down Drew Brees’ favorite target (TE Jimmy Graham), and they also play outdoors on a sloppy field.

The last point cannot be overstated. The Saints are a completely different offensive team outdoors on the grass (25.8 ppg) versus indoors on the turf (41.5 ppg). They'll be facing a Candlestick crowd that has a decade's worth of frustration to vent at Brees' and his ability to audible at the line of scrimmage.

Oh, and as a franchise, the Saints have never won a playoff game on the road.

On the flip side of the ball, the Saints' defense and blitz-happy Gregg Williams won’t be able to eviscerate the 49ers' pass protection like they did in the preseason opener.

In that matchup, Jim Harbaugh had barely met his lineman. This time, the San Francisco coaching staff will have had weeks to prepare for the Saints' pressure. (I know the New Orleans' matchup became official last weekend, but everyone has known a date with the Saints was looming for the last month. It was just a matter of where and when).

But, you ask, if the matchup is so favorable for San Francisco, then why does Vegas have the Saints as three-and-a-half-point favorites?

Thanks for asking—The Saints are two years removed from the Super Bowl and have a quarterback who just had one of the most gaudy offensive seasons in league history.

The 49ers are nearing 20 years since their last Super Bowl and have a quarterback who is politely referred to as a game manager and impolitely referred to as the reason San Francisco can’t win a championship.

Even those apparent obstacles work to the 49ers’ advantage, since they feed the “us against the world” fire that Harbaugh has been stoking all season.

Truthfully, I’d be more worried if San Francisco was facing a lesser opponent in this game—say Atlanta—since this 49ers team thrives in the face of skepticism and seems to buckle without it (see the Arizona game for reference).

The end result of all this for 49ers fans is that we are not only treated to our first playoff game in a decade, but we also finally have something to lose.

Sure, previous 49ers teams lost, lost and lost some more, but they were never good enough that a rational fan could truly be disappointed by that outcome. 

This year’s 49ers squad has once again given the Faithful a reason to believe and has created a new world order where we can expect a home playoff win in January.

Regardless of the outcome on Saturday, after a decade of being so low you thought you'd never get up, just having hope already feels like a victory.