The San Francisco 49ers (1-0) travel to New Orleans to play the Saints (0-1), who just dropped their home opener against the Arizona Cardinals. Despite the box score, the Saints kept it competitive until the last play of the game. TE Juwan Johnson couldn’t hold on to a potential game-tying score on the penultimate play of the game — if he did, it could have overshadowed the Los Gatos Leap as the catch of the week.
Before the Brock Purdy injury bombshell, the 49ers opened up as 7-point road favorites
on FanDuel Sportsbook. The spread has since narrowed to +4.5, with the total of 40.5 tied for the lowest in the NFL for Week 2. The murky nature of Purdy’s availability makes this a dynamic line worth monitoring, but even if Purdy doesn’t play, Mac Jones will have his work cut out for him. The Saints still have Cameron Jordan, who made life difficult for Kyler Murray, but they just lost their star safety Julian Blackmon for the season to a torn labrum. Kool-Aid McInstry got burned by Marvin Harrison Jr while their interior d-line and linebackers struggled against the run.
Can Mac Jones handle the pressure coming off the edge well enough to find the holes in the coverage? Can the run game get going enough to make Jones’ life easier? This is a worse defense than Seattle’s, but we might be trotting out a worse quarterback than last week. The Saints did give up several key explosives to the Cardinals, so Mac Jones just needs to hold on long enough. Pearsall and CMC *will* get loose against their subpar DBs and LBs; it’s just a matter of pass protection holding up.
On the other side of the ball, Spencer Rattler played better than the box score indicated. He made minimal mistakes, took what the defense gave him, and didn’t turn the ball over. The Saint offense committed 13 penalties, stalling half their drives with self-inflicted mistakes. Their two-headed monster of Alvin Kamara and Kendra Miller ran the ball to the tune of 4.9 yards per carry. Their right side of the line is a huge liability, with Cesar Ruiz and a hurt Taliese Fugal dropping the ball, but their left side is showing some promise. Kelvin Banks might be the real deal, especially in the run game.
If they scored 13 points against the Cardinals, expect similar or worse against the 49ers, especially with how stingy the run defense is looking (a weakness for Arizona given their LBs). But also don’t expect the 49ers to carve them up on offense, given that we might have Mac Jones facing some decent pressure. It might be a slog fest with lots of running and field goals. Unless, of course, Brock Purdy makes a miraculous recovery by Sunday, in which case we might see some more offensive fireworks.
Verdict: The 49ers will cover but won’t exceed the total.
