5 Bold Predictions for the San Francisco 49ers' Week 15 Matchup
With the season all but mathematically over, the San Francisco 49ers have to travel to Seattle to take on the dreaded Seahawks once again.
This is less-than-ideal, coming off the two worst passing days of Colin Kaepernick’s career. This is the time when, ideally, the 49ers would be facing a poor pass defense, like Washington or Atlanta, to rebuild confidence. Instead, they get a top-10 defense that absolutely destroyed them two weeks ago.
As a result, and justifiably so, the 49ers are double-digit underdogs, according to Odds Shark. The line started at just over a touchdown, but people saw the Seahawks defeat a tough Philadelphia team on the road and then saw the 49ers lose to a bad Oakland team and did the math. The Seahawks are very much the team in form, and the 49ers are very much not.
This is the first time the 49ers have been double-digit underdogs since 2011, when they faced the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 4. The 49ers actually won that game outright, riding Frank Gore to 127 yards and the game-winning touchdown in what was probably the first really big win in the Jim Harbaugh era.
I think it’s safe to say this week’s game would be a more impressive scalp than that one, but hey—Harbaugh is 1-0 in games where he’s a double-digit underdog. There’s your cause for optimism there, I suppose.
The 49ers are actually 4-6 in the last 10 games in which they’ve been double-digit underdogs, according to Pro-Football-Reference.com, stretching back to 2006 and the Mike Nolan era, and they’ve covered the spread an additional time. They’ve even beaten Seattle when double-digit underdogs over that time frame, back in 2006, per Pro-Football-Reference.com, again thanks to Gore.
Obviously, we’re stretching a bit to find signs for optimism here—the recent past does not bode well for San Francisco, so we have to look further back to find anything remotely resembling signs that the 49ers could somehow bounce back and knock off the Seahawks.
If they did manage to do it, of course, all of a sudden the season looks a little different—if the 49ers win out, and Arizona loses out, and Dallas loses to Philadelphia and Indianapolis and Detroit loses to Green Bay, the 49ers actually make the playoffs.
That’s a heck of an “if” when you include the 49ers traveling to Seattle and picking up a win there. Am I actually predicting that? Let’s make some predictions for the outcome of this game.
Colin Kaepernick Will Not Turn It Around This Week
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In my article yesterday, I pointed out that Kaepernick’s post-bye numbers are radically different than his pre-bye numbers. Specifically, he played like 2012-13 Kaepernick before the bye week hit, but since then he has performed more like a rookie, playing like Derek Carr or Blake Bortles.
I pointed out that, due to the particulars of his contract, he is more-or-less guaranteed to be the starter in 2015 but not 2016, and thus he has a 19-game clock to prove that he’s more like the quarterback he was in his first 30 starts than he has been recently.
You can go ahead and move that to an 18-game clock. I’m fairly sure that reputation rejuvenation will not come against a secondary boasting Richard Sherman and Earl Thomas, especially considering Kaepernick’s history against Seattle.
In non-Seattle games, Kaepernick has played very well historically, throwing 51 touchdowns to just 17 interceptions. Against Seattle, Kaepernick has thrown three touchdowns and nine interceptions. Other statistics drop off in a similar way. The Seahawks are both the toughest opponent he has faced and the team which has his number.
I’m not sure Kaepernick will ever be able to outplay the Seahawks defense as it’s currently constructed, and I’m even more doubtful he’d be able to do it this Sunday. That’s not to say the 49ers will never beat the Seahawks with Kaepernick at quarterback—they’ve done it once before—just that I doubt he’ll ever be the reason they beat them.
Expecting that to change this week is folly. It should be another long night for the 49ers' pass offense.
NaVorro Bowman Will Not Play
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The 49ers activated NaVorro Bowman to the 53-man roster on Tuesday, per 49ers.com. That means he’s eligible to play, less than a year after the horrific injury he suffered against Seattle in the NFC Championship last year.
Eligible to play and actually playing are two different things, however. While I am somewhat excited to see how Bowman and Chris Borland play together, as they will likely, one day, be the 49ers’ two starting inside linebackers; rushing Bowman back now would be a terrible idea.
Bowman has yet to practice fully and may not do so right away anyway. Vic Fangio is on record as saying that Bowman would need a few weeks of practice to get back on the field. While Fangio is somewhat historically conservative when giving out injury diagnoses, there’s also no pressing reason to rush him.
It’s not like this is a playoff game, or a win-and-you’re-in sort of game. Even if the 49ers do pull off an upset, they still need some luck to happen elsewhere to make the playoffs—most notably Andrew Luck heading into Dallas and knocking off the Cowboys, most likely.
If the 2014 season is essentially over, why risk reinjuring Bowman’s knee? It is better to sit him down for the entire season and have him be fully rested and ready to start 2015.
Bowman was able to be bumped up to the active roster because Vance McDonald ended up on season-ending injured reserve. It’ll be good for Bowman to get a few reps in practice and walkthroughs, but I don’t think we should see Bowman on the field in 2014, and especially not against Seattle this week.
The Pass Rush Will Be More Successful
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It’s not all doom-and-gloom for the 49ers. I think that they will actually get more pressure on Russell Wilson this week than they did on Thanksgiving.
Justin Smith and Ahmad Brooks had a little bit of luck against the Seahawks on Thanksgiving, but the Seahawks shut down Aldon Smith and Wilson’s legs were enough to get him out of trouble most of the time.
The 49ers had 25 pressures against Wilson on Thanksgiving, according to Pro Football Focus (subscription required), but 20 of them were just hurries, with Wilson able to run or throw the ball away before he could get hit.
That’s a very unusual ratio. Normally, teams reach the quarterback on more than a fifth of their quarterback pressures. You would expect more of those hurries to result in actual hits and sacks—it’s very unusual for consistent pressure like that to not result in blowing up plays.
Yes, Russell Wilson is a special player—note the Wilson vs. Kaepernick debate has somewhat died off this past season? And yes, Wilson is very good at getting out of pressure. According to PFF (subscription required), Wilson’s been pressured on 202 dropbacks this season and sacked on only 31 of them. Only Drew Brees has been more accurate and successful under that sort of pressure.
Still, though. If the 49ers again get pressure on about 60 percent of pass plays—and, given the state of the Seahawks' offensive line, I do expect them to do that—it would be very unlucky indeed to not bring Wilson down more often. Expect Wilson to be on his back a few more times in this game than he was two weeks ago.
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The 49ers Don’t Have a Miracle Up Their Sleeves
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While I tried to come up with some historical precedent in the opener as to why the 49ers could win this game, let’s be brutally frank. The 49ers are an average football team this year, in the same way that if you have your hand in the freezer and the other in a fire, you are, on average, comfortable.
The defense is stellar, but the offense is horrid, at least by “playoff contender” standards. Group this defense with, say, San Diego’s offense, and you’d make a playoff team. Instead, the 49ers are here, at 7-6, looking up at a nearly impossible to win game.
Could the 49ers win this game? Of course they could. Anything could happen—the Carolina Panthers just clobbered the New Orleans Saints on the road. The 49ers lost to the St. Louis Rams at home on a bizarre series of goal-line plays. Football’s crazy, and weird things happen all the time.
When the best you have to point to as a 49ers win is “things are crazy” or “the 49ers once won a game in 2011”, that’s not great. I consider myself an optimist, but predicting a 49ers win in this game is beyond optimism—it’s downright crazy.
Is it impossible that the 49ers will win? No. The team, with mostly the same roster, has beaten the Seahawks before and very nearly beat them in the championship game last season. Those teams weren’t coming off two of the most demoralizing losses in the Jim Harbaugh era, though, and those teams had something to play for. This team really doesn’t.
Prediction: Seattle 30, San Francisco 10
The 49ers Will Be Mathematically Eliminated from the Playoffs
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The loss to Seattle, by itself, is enough to knock the 49ers down to only a possible sixth seed, but I’m predicting worse than that, if you’re still holding on to hope that the 49ers will somehow return to the postseason this year. I ran through possible scenarios in the opening, but they were mostly contingent on the 49ers beating Seattle, which I don’t think they will do.
See, if the 49ers lose to the Seahawks, they’ll be knocked down to 7-7. In the AFC, that’s still in the thick of the playoff race, but that’s not where the 49ers are.
At the same time the 49ers are playing, the Detroit Lions will be taking on the Minnesota Vikings in Detroit. The Lions beat the Vikings back in October in Minnesota, and I see no particular reason to think the result will be flipped at home. I have the Lions winning comfortably, somewhere in the 27-17 range.
That would move the Lions up to 10-4 and thus out of range of a potential nine-win 49ers club. Also out of range are the 10-win Cardinals, Packers and victorious Seahawks.
Either the Packers or Lions win the NFC North. Either the Cardinals or Seahawks win the NFC West. That still leaves at least two 10-win teams vying for playoff spots, and the 49ers can’t get there. While most realistic 49ers fans have already accepted that the 49ers aren’t going anywhere this season, Sunday will make it official. The 49ers will miss the 2014 playoffs.
Bryan Knowles is a featured columnist for Bleacher Report, covering the San Francisco 49ers. Follow him @BryKno on Twitter.
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