The San Francisco 49ers are on the road to begin the playoffs, facing the Philadelphia Eagles in the wild-card round on Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.
The 49ers had a disappointing end to the regular
season, squandering an opportunity to win the NFC West and get the conference’s No. 1 seed with a 13-3 loss at home to the Seattle Seahawks. In that game, the 49ers offense was completely neutralized, totaling only 173 yards in a game that wasn’t as close as the score indicated.
Nonetheless, San Francisco is back to regular rest and will have to regroup for a playoff push, which starts with the defending champions. Philadelphia has had an inconsistent season as its offense has seen its lulls, but it still won the NFC East with an 11-6 record, earning the No. 3 seed in the NFC.
Their defense allows just 19.1 points a contest, good for fifth in the NFL. But there is an avenue to victory for San Francisco, and it comes in an area that they had seen improvements in up until last week: running the ball.
To begin the season, San Francisco was one of the worst rushing offenses in the NFL. Without George Kittle and dealing with some injuries on that side of the ball, the 49ers did not get much traction on the ground with Christian McCaffrey, who was one of the most inefficient backs in the league.
McCaffrey, who has the NFL’s second-most carries this season with 311, has slowly started to break out over the past few weeks, eclipsing the 100-yard mark in wins over the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears. That all came crashing down last week when the running back was held to just eight carries because the 49ers weren’t efficient at running the ball on first down.
Well, while the Eagles have shown a good defense this year, they haven’t been the best run defense. Philadelphia ranks 22nd in the NFL, allowing 124.4 rushing yards per game. While they’re middle of the pack in yards allowed per carry (4.3), teams have also looked to run the ball on Philly at a high rate (27th in the NFL with 29.1 rushing attempts allowed per game).
When you look at Philadelphia’s six losses, all of them were correlated with issues in run defense. They gave up 130, 172, 125, 281, 169, and 143 rushing yards in those six games, averaging out to 170 yards a game. In their 11 wins, they allowed less than 100 rushing yards a game.
The 49ers have a good passing attack, but this win has to come through Christian McCaffrey. It’s a big help if Trent Williams is back on Sunday because it can change how a defense approaches the 49ers offense. Without Williams in the fold last week, the Seahawks ran nickel exclusively and elected to drop more players back into coverage rather than stacking the box.
That strategy doesn’t work as well when Williams is leading the charge at left tackle. But the 49ers need to be committed to the run game and be more successful on early downs, which has been the formula for teams beating the Eagles this year.
