Tag: 49ers standings

Importance of 49ers Week 10 win illustrated in USA TODAY NFL power rankings

Week 10 wasn’t pretty, but it was enough to push the 49ers way up the NFL power rankings.

It may not have looked exactly how they wanted it to look, but the San Francisco 49ers secured an important 23-20 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 10.

There’s plenty for the 49ers to iron out, particularly on special teams where a muffed punt and a trio of missed field goals changed the tenor of Sunday’s game. However, their victory was crucial for keeping pace in the NFC West and NFC playoff races.

A good illustrator of just how important their Week 10 win was comes via the USA TODAY NFL power rankings. San Francisco entered the week at No. 16, but finished at No. 11, one spot behind the NFC West-leading Arizona Cardinals.

While they didn’t play their best football in Week 10, there are reasons to believe better play is coming given their post-Bye history under head coach Kyle Shanahan.

Via USA TODAY’s Nate Davis:

Their post-bye record in 2024 (with RB Christian McCaffrey) is 1-0. Their post-bye record since 2021 is 31-9.

This is a nice stat that should provide some optimism for 49ers fans. However, the 2024 season hasn’t been great through 10 weeks and the team hasn’t shown the ability to flip a switch and dominate a game for 60 minutes.

Cutting down on self-inflicted wounds could quickly set the 49ers up as a Super Bowl contender once again. If they continue making those mistakes, they won’t be a team hanging around the top 10 much longer with games coming up against NFC West rival Seattle, the No. 9 Green Bay Packers and No. 4 Buffalo Bills.

If the 49ers are going to be a contender this year, they’ll have to prove it in this stretch.

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Kyle Shanahan: Past slow starts won’t help 49ers in 2024

Can the 49ers past experience with slow starts help them climb out of this year’s early-season rut? Head coach Kyle Shanahan says no.

The San Francisco 49ers through five weeks find themselves in unfavorable, familiar territory.

Slow starts were a hallmark of Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers for a few seasons following an 8-0 start in the 2019 campaign. In 2020 they were 4-4 through eight games. The next year they fell to 3-5 before putting together a late-season run and finishing 10-7. It was more of the same in 2022 when they started 3-4 before ripping off 10 in a row to finish the year.

In 2023 things changed, but they still dropped three in a row after a 5-0 start before finishing 12-5.

This season is another slow start with the 49ers sitting at 2-3 through five weeks. Logic says this group, many of which have been part of the teams that struggled to start 2021 and 2022, would be calloused to the adversity this year’s team is facing. Head coach Kyle Shanahan doesn’t believe previous experience will play a role in whether the 49ers can climb out of the rut they dug for themselves in 2024.

“No, I don’t think it pertains to anything,” Shanahan said on a conference call. “I think everybody goes off their life experiences and we have some people who have been here can always resort to that and just know how things work. I’ve been through a number of them in my whole coaching career, not just here.

“So, you always know going through this that you can never count yourself out until you’re actually eliminated from something. I’ve seen teams start 0-4 and get there before. So, there’s lots of things that go into it. But I think every year’s different and we’ve got to write our own story this year and it has nothing to do with other years.”

For this year’s 49ers there are a handful of significant changes from past years that will require perhaps a different formula for San Francisco.

Their defense hasn’t been as good as in year’s past, but they have better quarterback play which gives some optimism that there’s a better version of the 49ers on the horizon.

The real issue, which supports what Shanahan said, is that the 49ers will need to rely on a slew of young players to help buoy the club after a rocky start to this year. Those players haven’t been in this spot before. The experience of some of the team’s leaders will help the 49ers, but they won’t automatically make the playoffs just because they’ve been here before.

San Francisco needs to be better, and if they don’t get better, no amount of experience is going to save them from the mediocrity they’re careening toward at the end of Week 5.

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