Niners Nation
San Francisco 49ers fans could not have asked for a better week of football. Not only did they start NFL Week 5 by beating their NFC West Rivals, the Los Angeles Rams, on Thursday Night Football, but the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals both suffered losses on Sunday.
It’s not just the NFC West; the 49ers are sitting pretty, they are also in first for playoff seeding in the NFC. We have a lot, A LOT of football left to be played, and the season isn’t even halfway over, so this is far from concluded. Considering the injury issues of this team and the fact that they’ve only lost one game, that should say something. All four of the 49ers’ wins this year are games they no doubt would have lost last year. When you consider how young this team is, getting out these hard, difficult wins will do more than shape the landscape of 2025; that’s something to establish culturally with the next generation.
The 49ers are hard to pin, but that win on Thursday, with a litany of backups and a shortened week to deal with, tells you they are not to be taken lightly. They also have won all three of their divisional matchups, two of which were on the road. The Arizona Cardinals away game will need to be played, but both the Rams and Seahawks will need to get wins at Levi’s Field.
It’s time to Ram it again. Even when the 49ers got up 14-0 in this game, there was just something in the back of your mind, false hope, perhaps. The question wasn’t going to be “if,” but “when.” And when Kendrick Bourne made a key third-down drop that might have made it 17-0 or even 21-0, that’s when things started unraveling, and the Rams came to life. Bourne would go on to catch 10 of his 11 targets for 142 yards receiving. His lone incompletion was maybe the most crucial. We could designate that play as the turning point.
Except the 49ers didn’t back down. In two of the most impressive defensive stands I’ve seen, they kept the Rams out of the end zone with a hell of a play by Alfred Collins and then stonewalled the Rams in overtime to take the victory.
I will never get tired of seeing these two plays:
Man, if you felt good about Collins throwing a Mike Tyson-inspired haymaker at the ball, look at how he felt.
And then there’s this:
The 2024 San Francisco 49ers would not have stopped this. They might not have even gotten out of the first goal-line-stand. If there’s any question about Robert Saleh being worth all that money, the question to ask is why he isn’t paid even more. I know there are concerns that he may leave in the offseason after just one year. We’ll have to see. Saleh has a lot of autonomy and trust with Kyle Shanahan—something Steve Wilks and Nick...
