Kurtenbach
far as it can already. In the first 11 contests of the season, the 49ers averaged four sacks a game behind a deep defensive line rotation and a defensive scheme that was multiple, dynamic, and wily.
But over the past three contests, the 49ers have three sacks in total.
Credit the opposing quarterbacks and offensive lines, but with the numbers on the 49ers’ defensive depleted, the team’s “Gold Rush” gilding seems to be flaking. Don’t get me wrong: DeForest Buckner, Arik Armstead, and Nick Bosa have been strong, but the coterie of that comprised the rotation of pass rushers that helped free up those players to get to the quarterback or capitalized from the attention thrown the stars’ way is no longer around.
Instead of Dee Ford or the underrated Ronald Blair on the outside, the 49ers now have Armstead (who is better as a speed-rushing interior lineman), Solomon Thomas (whose most useful position is yet to be determined, perhaps for a reason), or someone named Jeremiah Valoaga.
Instead of the outstanding DJ Jones or the impressive Damontre Moore at nose tackle, taking up two blockers and anchoring the run defense, the Niners have Sheldon Day or, if they’re lucky ahead of Week 17’s game with the Seahawks, Jullian Taylor.
This is a line that lacks the bite it once had — a unit that looks downright tired. “The more reps people take they can’t go as hard for every time they’re in,” 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said. “I think guys do wear down a little bit with that. It does add up.”
“I definitely don’t pace myself. Maybe I need to learn how,” Bosa said. “But I just go hard every play. It might end up biting me in the end.”
Without that ferocious pass rush, the 49ers’ defense simply cannot reach the dominant levels that it displayed early in the season — there’s a deeply symbiotic relationship between the pass rush and pass coverage, which has been hurt on its own accord by injuries, the biggest of which is the rib injury to do-it-all safety and defensive linchpin Jaquaski Tartt. Weakness in one in a weakness in the other. And now is no time for weakness.
Pair that with a rush defense that’s allowed five yards a carry over the last eight games, and you do not have the basis of a unit that can spearhead a Super Bowl push.
Someone is going to have to pick up the slack.
Even with an underwhelming, dink-and-dunktastic performance against the Falcons in the 49ers’ loss last Sunday, Garoppolo has been strong for the 49ers in the second half of the season. Since Halloween, when Garoppolo led the Niners on a game-winning drive at Arizona, he has played the best football of his career, completing 68 percent of his passes and throwing 17 touchdowns to only four interceptions — good for an elite-level passer rating of 110.
But the 49ers have only gone 4-3 during that stretch. It might be too much to ask, but the 49ers need even more from their quarterback now that the games have severe consequences.
If the 49ers do not win the NFC West — and despite their Week 17 matchup with the Seahawks, divisional tiebreakers could make it so they do not have a chance to do so unless they win tonight — they will in all likelihood have to play three straight road games to make the Super Bowl.
The 49ers might have the highest ceiling of any team in the NFC, but three straight road wins is simply too much to ask of this team.
But if the 49ers win the NFC West — by either on-field determination or a strengthof-victory or strength-ofschedule tiebreaker — they will also likely hold the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs, leaving them with only two playoff games to make the Super Bowl, both at home.
Would you rather play three games or two? Road games or home games?
At least that part of the end-of-season shuffle is easy to answer.
This is why I posited that the playoffs start today — it doesn’t take much extrapolation to understand that the 49ers’ season is on the line in every single game they have remaining on the schedule.
And the playoffs are defined by teams with great head coaches and great quarterbacks — a great defense is merely icing on the cake in this day and age. For Garoppolo — and Shanahan, too — this is the time to enter the pantheon of league leaders.
Garoppolo is 17-5 as the 49ers’ starting quarterback. That record isn’t a fluke. But does it hint at greatness?
We’re about to find out.