Can 49ers break record for longest win streak in franchise history?

The 2022-23 #49ers now have the 2nd-longest win streak in franchise history. Can they set the record?

With their Week 2 win over the Rams the 49ers pushed their regular season winning streak to 12 games dating back to last season.

The 2022-23 49ers now stand alone with the second-longest win streak in franchise history. Their 12 consecutive victories are three shy of the franchise record of 15 games which the club won between the 1989 and 1990 campaigns.

It seems inconceivable that any 49ers team would match a feat of one of the greatest teams from their storied past, but a quick look at the schedule shows a definite possibility that San Francisco sneaks past that all-time win streak mark.

Let’s look at their next handful of games and whether they could really get to 16 wins in a row:

Notes and observations from 49ers tough win over Rams

Notes and observations from the #49ers wild Week 2 win at SoFi Stadium:

The 49ers didn’t start nearly as fast as they did in Week 1 against the Steelers, but they made enough plays down the stretch of Week 2 to eventually put the Rams away at SoFi Stadium.

A 30-23 victory for San Francisco put them at 2-0 for the season and kept them atop the NFC West. It was also their ninth-straight regular season win over Sean McVay’s squad.

It wasn’t pretty, but the 49ers will take any early-season Ws they can get. Here are our observations from each quarter:

It’s been such a long time since 49ers lost to Rams in regular season

The 49ers on Sunday will visit SoFi Stadium looking for their ninth consecutive regular season win over the Los Angeles Rams. San Francisco did lose the 2021 NFC championship game to LA, but the club hasn’t fallen to Sean McVay’s squad since the …

The 49ers on Sunday will visit SoFi Stadium looking for their ninth consecutive regular season win over the Los Angeles Rams.

San Francisco did lose the 2021 NFC championship game to LA, but the club hasn’t fallen to Sean McVay’s squad since the 2018 season. It hasn’t just been because of a talent disparity between the two teams. Both teams have been at worst competitive over that stretch, but the 49ers have simply dominated the matchup.

On Sunday the 49ers will aim to extend their win overall win streak and their win streak over the Rams in the regular season. Before we get to kickoff though, we wanted to look back at the last time the 49ers lost to the Rams. To do that we rewound to the final week of the 2018 season where the Rams knocked off San Francisco 48-32 in LA and pulled out some facts from that game:

49ers-Rams Week 2 matchup an early turning point in NFC West race

It’s a sneaky big NFC West matchup between the #49ers and Rams this weekend:

The 49ers on Sunday will head down I-5 to face the Rams at SoFi Stadium in what could be a significant turning point in the 2023 NFC West race.

While it’s still just Week 2 and Sunday’s game between the 49ers and Rams won’t decide the division, the winner could wind up with a significant leg up to start the year.

San Francisco and LA are tied atop the NFC West after winning their Week 1 matchups. The Cardinals and Seahawks both lost their season openers to put them in the back of the NFC West at 0-1.

Arizona doesn’t appear to be on track for a competitive year after a dreary Week 1 loss to the Commanders in Washington. They’ll be at home hosting the Giants in Week 2 in a game that New York, a playoff team last year, will be looking as a bounce-back opportunity following their abysmal Week 1 outing. It would be a pretty big surprise if the Cardinals didn’t exit the week at 0-2.

Meanwhile, Seattle will travel to Detroit to square off against a Lions club that beat the Chiefs in Kansas City to begin the year. The Seahawks should bounce back and play better than they did in their season-opening loss to the Rams, but Detroit is favored and could very easily put the Seahawks at 0-2 with the Cardinals.

If the Cardinals and Seahawks both lose, that turns the 49ers-Rams game into a battle to try and take a two-game lead on two teams in the division. It will also give the winner an early tiebreaker on the loser.

Should San Francisco extend their regular-season winning streak over the Rams to nine, they’d be in the driver’s seat in a division they were heavily-favored to win.

If the Rams snap the 49ers’ run of regular-season dominance against them, it puts San Francisco in a precarious position to start the season. They’d be a game back in the division and needing to overcome a potential tiebreaker. With a brutal schedule toward the middle and end of the year, it’s going to be vital that the 49ers stack some wins early in the season.

The NFC West won’t be decided Sunday, but the winner of 49ers-Rams could grab a comfortable early lead and force a steep uphill climb for the other three teams behind them.

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Brock Purdy and Matthew Stafford will make history together Sunday when 49ers visit Rams

This Brock Purdy fact is funny because it’s been a different version of this fact basically every time he’s stepped on the field:

It’s pretty tough for 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy to not make history every time he steps on the field. Mr. Irrelevant doesn’t typically have an outsized impact in the NFL, and that’s even more true when Mr. Irrelevant is a quarterback. That’s why a note tweeted by NFL Media’s Andrew Siciliano is a little bit funny.

When rookie Purdy took the field for the 49ers in the final seconds of a blowout win over the Panthers in Week 6 last season, he became the second Mr. Irrelevant QB to ever appear in a game. The other was Broncos QB Chad Kelly whose only snap as a pro was a kneel down to end the first half of a 2018 Week 6 loss to the Rams.

That meant Purdy’s first pass as a pro (a 20-yard completion to Ray-Ray McCloud) in a blowout loss to the Chiefs was the first pass ever thrown by Mr. Irrelevant. The ball of firsts kept rolling in Week 13 when he took over as the starter for the injured Jimmy Garoppolo. There was the first TD pass by a QB selected with the final pick. The first win. The first road win. The first playoff start. The list is longer than a Kyle Shanahan play sheet.

Even as he enters his second season, the firsts keep coming. Siciliano dropped this one on Twitter ahead of the 49ers’ visit to Los Angeles to face Matthew Stafford and the Rams:

That’s an objectively fun fact!

The problem is it works with *rifles through notes* virtually every quarterback Purdy has faced since Mr. Irrelevant had never started a game at QB prior to him.

He was the first QB selected with the last overall pick to start against a QB picked: 199th (Tom Brady), 39th (Geno Smith), 133rd (Jarrett Stidham), 135th (Dak Prescott), 53rd (Jalen Hurts) and 20th (Kenny Pickett).

The fun fact also spreads to undrafted QBs, where Purdy became the first QB picked last to start against an undrafted rookie when he faced Commanders QB Taylor Heinicke in Week 16 last season.

Sunday Purdy will start against former No. 1 overall pick Matthew Stafford. That’ll be yet another first, but it won’t be the last of them since by this definition Purdy makes history every time he gets under center for the 49ers.

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The mostly good and some bad from 49ers’ blowout win over Rams

Lotta good, some not-so-good in the #49ers’ thumping of the Rams:

The 49ers moved back to 4-4 in style as they swept the Los Angeles Rams behind a dominant second-half performance, winning 31-14 at SoFi Stadium.

Following Cooper Kupp’s touchdown with 6:41 remaining in the second quarter, the 49ers scored 24 unanswered points to end a two-game losing streak and improve to 3-0 in the division with a fourth successive regular-season sweep of Los Angeles.

It was a game in which recently acquired star running back Christian McCaffrey took over, though head coach Kyle Shanahan declared after the game that no one player stood out above the rest.

Shanahan is right in the sense that it is tough to find areas to fault after such an emphatic win, and we have skewed positive in this week’s look at the good and the bad from the Niners’ latest successful visit to Los Angeles.



How 49ers produced a stunning 2nd-half turnaround against Rams

The #49ers struggled in the first half Sunday. Then everything changed after halftime. (via @nicholasmcgee24)

The 49ers were staring at a 3-5 start at half-time of their NFC West clash with the Los Angeles Rams, trailing 14-10 with their defense struggling to contain Cooper Kupp and their offense having failed to execute in the red zone. By the end of the game, they were celebrating an emphatic and hugely important 31-14 victory over the defending Super Bowl champions.

San Francisco decimated the Rams in the second half at SoFi Stadium, completing a season sweep that moves the Niners to 3-0 in the NFC West and gives them a potentially crucial tiebreaker in tight fight for the division.

Such was the 49ers’ second-half dominance that the Rams were essentially waving the white flag with just under six minutes remaining by calling a run on third down before punting back to San Francisco.

So how exactly did the 49ers turn things around in such significant fashion? The obvious answer is the unbelievable performance by Christian McCaffrey, who followed up an encouraging debut against the Chiefs with a second act in which he racked up 149 yards and two touchdowns from scrimmage and threw for a 34-yard touchdown in an historic effort.

Though McCaffrey was clearly the catalyst, he wasn’t the sole reason why the Niners were able to take over. Here we analyze how the turnaround happened.

 

 

 

 

 



Thoughts and notes from another 49ers beatdown of Rams

Another dominant 49ers regular season win over the Rams. Thoughts from the Christian McCaffrey Show:

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Another 49ers-Rams matchup, another 49ers victory. This time it was a 31-14 win after falling behind 14-7 in the first half. It’s the eighth regular-season win in a row over the Rams.

Here are our observations from throughout Sunday’s game.

Hat trick for Christian McCaffrey vs. Rams after rushing TD

Christian McCaffrey: Good player. Here’s his 3rd TD:

Christian McCaffrey is doing it all for the 49ers. His third overall TD came on the ground to put the 49ers ahead 24-14. He also threw a TD and caught one to become the first player since LaDainian Tomlinson in 2005 to have all three in a game. He’s been responsible for more than half the 49ers offense and all three of their TDs.

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Fred Warner, Nick Bosa sack Matthew Stafford

WATCH: Fred Warner, Nick Bosa sack Matthew Stafford.

The 49ers defense was having a hard time getting off the field on third down, and having a hard time getting after the quarterback Sunday vs. the Rams. They did both things on a third-and-eight late in the third quarter. Nick Bosa and Fred Warner both found their way to Matthew Stafford to bring him down and force a Rams punt following a go-ahead touchdown for San Francisco’s offense.