For the second time in three weeks, the Seattle Seahawks will play the San Francisco 49ers with winner-take-all stakes on the line.
When the two teams met in Santa Clara on January 3, the Seahawks ground out a 13-3 win to clinch the NFC West and a first-round playoff bye.
Undeterred, the 49ers travelled to Philadelphia last week and knocked off the Eagles 23-19 in the wildcard round, setting up a rematch with the Seahawks in Seattle.
When they take the field on Saturday, it will provide a defining moment in the season for both teams. The Seahawks will be looking for their first playoff win under coach Mike McDonald, and the 49ers will be looking to continue their remarkable run of overcoming the odds, no matter the obstacles put in their way.
The 49ers finished 12-5 despite a laundry list of injuries. If their run is going to continue, they’ll have to overcome another one: star tight end Greg Kittle is out for the year with an Achilles injury suffered in the win over Philadelphia. That’s going to make a tall order against a Seahawks defense that already held them to just three points two weeks ago.
No matter how banged up the 49ers may be, the Seahawks are not going to look past them. Can the Seahawks keep rolling and end the 49ers’ miraculous run? If so, here’s how they are going to do it:
- Sam Darnold will have to do something. When the Seahawks and 49ers met two weeks ago, the game plan was simple: The Seahawks were not going to let their own offense beat them. Darnold threw for only 198 yards and no touchdowns, but crucially did not turn the ball over. Instead, it was the Seahawks’ ground game that did most of the work on offense, with Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet combining for over 170 rushing yards and a touchdown. If the Seahawks defense plays as it has for most of the season and keeps points to a premium, the 49ers will not have a choice in their defensive strategy: They will need to bottle up Walker and Charbonnet and force Darnold to beat them. To be clear, the Seahawks possess plenty of weapons for Darnold to get the ball to; they need to choose to do so. However, to do that, Darnold is going to need to shake off the ghosts of a loss in the divisional round last year when he was with the Minnesota Vikings and keep his performance on an even keel. The last time Stafford was asked to contribute significantly was December 18, when he passed for 270 yards and a pair of touchdowns vs the Rams, but also threw two interceptions. Turnovers and a short field will be just what the beat-up San Francisco offense needs, so Darnold will need to thread the fine line of keeping the passing attack dangerous, but also not throwing the ball to the players in the wrong uniform.
- The defense needs to keep doing its job. It cannot be overstated how dominant the Seahawks’ defense was against the 49ers in their last meeting. The 49ers were held to 175 yards of total offense. Purdy managed just 127 passing yards while under constant pressure, and Christian McCafferty only had 23 rushing yards. San Francisco’s longest rush of the night was 11 yards – a scramble by Purdy. They only had one drive of more than 30 yards in the game, and it ended with Purdy being intercepted at the Seattle 4-yard line. The 49ers could not move the ball effectively. To have a chance, they are going to have to dig into their bag of tricks and see if they can pull off a trick play as they did against Philadelphia, when wide receiver Juann Jennings hit McCafferty for a 29-yard touchdown. The problem for San Francisco is that Seattle knows San Francisco’s tricks. But when your quarterback is banged up, your star tight end is gone, and your offensive line is a patchwork, you must take risks. The Seahawks defense will be ready to punish those risks.
- Jason Myers needs to get back on track. The Seahawks have put a lot on Myers leg this year, and the veteran kicker has mostly delivered. However, in the regular season finale, the Seahawks won in spite of him. Myers missed a pair of field goals against the 49ers and also sent a kickoff out of bounds. If they go with the same conservative game plan they have deployed twice against the 49ers this season, where the Seahawks are willing to trade risky endzone shots for field goal tries, Myers is going to need to convert those chances. Missed field goals provide the same short field opportunities for the 49ers that turnovers do, and the Seahawks can’t afford either. In what figures to be a low-scoring game that could come down to the final possessions, the Seahawks need to be able to trust their kicker. If there is a decided positive about the Seahawks clinching homefield advantage, it’s that Myers is 20-22 this season at Lumen Field – 91% – vs just 80% on the road.
Prediction: Even though the 49ers are banged up and on a short week, they are not going to let the Seahawks move on easily. But the Seahawks know their tricks, know their tendencies and have the best defense in the league. In what figures to be another low scoring affair, Myers gets back on track and kicks three field goals as the Seahawks slip past the 49ers 16-13 to move on to the NFC championship.
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