49ers beat Seahawks: San Francisco won’t lose unless opponent is perfect

Watch Deebo Samuel’s 74-yard touchdown through the 49ers’ 41–23 wild-card win over the Seahawks once more. Pause it 1.5 seconds in, whereas Brock Purdy is whipping a pretend toss to his proper aspect. There are 9 defensive gamers in plain view, six of them are barreling towards Christian McCaffrey, abruptly entranced with and terrified by the proposition of his getting one other contact.

Right here it’s, so you possibly can comply with alongside:

Pause it once more, this time after three seconds. Purdy completes his rollout and calmly seems downfield as a Seahawks linebacker, Cody Barton, runs at him together with his palms within the air. Purdy, for these of you who plugged your ears for a majority of this broadcast, was the final participant (262nd) taken within the 2022 draft. He’s the youngest participant in NFL historical past to throw for not less than two touchdowns and run for an additional in a playoff sport. He’s the primary rookie to account for 4 whole touchdowns in a playoff sport. He began his first playoff sport wanting like a toddler on a surfboard and ended it wanting like Kelly Slater.

Pause it at 5 seconds. Samuel will get his palms on the ball and there isn’t a participant on both aspect of him for 4 yards. He seems like a well-known particular person wading comfortably by a live performance crowd aided by private safety.

Pause it at six seconds and watch George Kittle use his physique to legally field a defender out of the play.

Pause it at seven seconds, when Samuel seems round, seemingly giddy about how a lot room he has, sufficient that he can skip-hop a bit as he finds his path to the tip zone.

Pause it at 9 seconds and watch Brandon Aiyuk drive potential Defensive Rookie of the Yr Tariq Woolen out of the play so Samuel can preserve operating. This can be a former-first-round-pick huge receiver scrapping like a barfly.

Pause it at 11 seconds when it turns into clear that no steroid on the earth may be taken to assist somebody stop Samuel from scoring at this level. Medina Spirit wouldn’t have caught him. Our bodies fall behind him like cardboard tombstones on Halloween.

Pause it at 13 seconds and notice that Samuel wasn’t even operating as quick as he presumably may.

Right here, in an area of time shorter than your common TikTok video, was the merciless, unvarnished fact about this yr’s NFC playoffs: You will should be good to beat the 49ers. Completely, stone-cold good. The rookie quarterback is greater than ok. The skill-position gamers are higher than your protection. The protection is best than another within the league. They block effectively, and never simply throughout the offensive line. Everybody takes a flip. They create open house higher than any scheme in soccer. They’ve extra useful workforce velocity than anybody else within the NFL. They’re greater, faster, harder, meaner, higher coached and extra environment friendly.

The Seahawks gave it their finest effort and completed like an newbie golfer on the Masters. After the sport, Pete Carroll stated he was pissed off as a result of he thought the sport was of their grasp. They gained’t be the one ones to really feel that means this postseason.

The 49ers can transfer on a workforce in so many alternative methods. They’ll come off the opening kickoff wielding a hammer and bludgeoning them to items. Their protection can crawl its means into the backfield and strip-sack you to dying. Or they may do what they did Saturday in opposition to Seattle. It may appear to be an actual race. It may look aggressive. It may search for half-hour like each groups belong on the identical discipline, in the identical division, in the identical playoff bracket. After which, like Eliud Kipchoge in a marathon, you flip round and so they’re forward by eight miles, cruising, smiling, waving to whoever can nonetheless see them off within the distance.

There are a handful of excellent groups on this yr’s postseason discipline, however so few of them profile just like the 49ers. We’ve seen the Payments falter. We’ve seen what the Chiefs are lacking, by way of a constant, complementary operating sport that may take the stress off Patrick Mahomes when dealing with the league’s finest secondaries. We all know what the Eagles appear to be with out Jalen Hurts, or with out him at full power. We’ve not seen the 49ers lose since Halloween. In that point interval, we’ve got presumably seen one or two video games you could possibly classify as unhealthy or sloppy. We have seen 11 consecutive wins, which is the longest profitable streak within the NFL. We’ve seen shutout wins. We’ve seen 38–10, 35–7 and 38–13.

We’ll prevent the difficulty of going again and watching all of them. Every thing that makes the 49ers so terrifying was there in that 13 seconds in opposition to the Seahawks on Saturday. Who’s stopping that?