- 9 minutes ago
Willard and Dibs discuss the 49ers offense through three weeks and break down if that makes them legitimate Super Bowl contenders.
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00:00There are the, uh, the Superbowl contending San Francisco 49ers.
00:05I mean, they're not Superbowl contending because it is September.
00:09But if you want to look at like, who's hot, who's not the old, like stock up, stock down
00:14right now through three weeks, it would be hard to find another team that is better or
00:20has played better.
00:21If you did your cockamamie power rankings, and I know you hate this, but looking at three
00:26weeks of football for me, they'd have to be number one.
00:29Um, they have to be one, two, three, whatever.
00:32Sure.
00:33Sure.
00:33Sure.
00:33Sure.
00:34Bills.
00:35Chiefs.
00:35Sure.
00:36Yeah.
00:36Whatever.
00:37Um, yeah.
00:38Whatever you want to do.
00:39Both beat Miami.
00:40I mean, Chiefs beat them on the road and the Niners beat them here.
00:43Right.
00:44Niners beat the Superbowl favorites and they beat them like a drum.
00:47Sure did.
00:47And, and they beat the Cardinals who have been at minimum plucky.
00:51Right.
00:52Annoying.
00:52Plucky.
00:53For sure.
00:53You know what I mean?
00:53They were tied with Seahawks at halftime.
00:55They beat the Chargers.
00:56Everybody beats the Chargers.
00:58I don't know.
00:59Um, I actually would argue they are Superbowl contending, even though I don't like Superbowl
01:05talk in September, you know that, but that's what we're doing here.
01:09That's what all of these teams are, are trying to do.
01:12And if you do look at it from the perspective of just a level of play, that's, that's kind
01:18of how I feel about it.
01:19And so I think that's, this is an interesting question.
01:22I think to answer eight at eight, nine, five, seven, nine, five, 70 stink is going to come
01:27up here, uh, at, uh, at three o'clock.
01:30And, uh, so we'll talk to Mark Slareth.
01:32We've got Grandy's grades later on.
01:34Um, but a lot of your phone calls today, eight at eight, nine, five, seven, nine, five,
01:3870.
01:38The questions from August, have they been answered?
01:43And let's sort of, I mean, look, you can enter it into the conversation, but it's an omnipresent
01:49fear about injury.
01:51And, um, I'll continue to bang the drum until noted otherwise, but a lot of the 49er injuries
01:58we're seeing right now are temporary for the moment.
02:03They're temporary.
02:04Like they have not had too many.
02:05I know a few, but not had too many.
02:08Like a lot of teams have of the season end or ending variety, Jackson, Dart, Devon, A-Chan.
02:14Um, we can go on, you know, there's been some, there's been some major stuff out there.
02:17Some quarterbacks who've gone down, some quarterbacks are going to miss significant
02:21time, uh, Baker Mayfield, et cetera.
02:23Um, or just really, really poor play, uh, Drake, maybe we're looking at you.
02:29So Jalen hurts and Philly.
02:32I mean, that was a dreadful boy performance.
02:35Yeah.
02:36So eight at eight, nine, five, seven, nine, five, 70 to what level with, with the fact that
02:42there is a world out there where the 49ers have some semblance of health at a key time
02:48in the second half of the year, whatever you were sort of concerned about in August, or
02:55if you thought, boy, if this tracks a certain way, may that's like, that's kind of how I
03:00would define what I thought people felt, boy, if they're healthy and this kind of, it tweaks
03:07a certain way, maybe the Niners could have, you know, closing of the window, one last gasp
03:15at this, boy, I don't think that's the take anymore.
03:18I don't think that's the take anymore.
03:20I don't like, I don't know who's ready to admit this, but the Niners have swaggered the
03:23hell into this season and they've said, we're here and we're the biggest badasses on the
03:28planet right now.
03:29I don't know if it'll last.
03:31We'll see.
03:31I mean, it lasts as long as the next game.
03:34I mean, you could drop the next two and not have the same swagger, but still be three
03:37and two and still be very good.
03:39But I think about it in terms of like right now, if you look at the Niners and they don't
03:44make the playoffs, you're three and oh, and you miss the playoffs.
03:48My God, that is an absolute disaster.
03:50Shock me at this point.
03:52But honestly, like if they go six and eight, the rest of the way they go nine and eight
03:56and they don't make the playoffs, that would be a stunner.
03:59So are they a Super Bowl contender?
04:01Yes, because I think that if you're one of the 14 that gets to play playoff football,
04:06you are a contender.
04:07Now, every contender is different than the others.
04:09If you win the NFC South, are you a real, quote, contender?
04:13Like the Chicago White Sox are in the playoffs and I think they're trading on Calci at about
04:18a 2% chance to win the whole thing.
04:20Are they a contender?
04:21Well, yeah.
04:22I mean, more so than the Dodgers and I mean, the Giants and the A's.
04:25Yeah, they're allowed to, they're allowed to go in.
04:27From that standpoint, are the Niners a contender?
04:28Yes.
04:29But if you get to the playoffs and you are, you know, the division winner, maybe you're the
04:33one seed, you're 13 and four.
04:35Or, well then, yeah, now we're looking at a different level of swagger.
04:38This is the kind of way I look at it.
04:40It's not always the case, but it's often the case.
04:42A championship level team.
04:44Don't want to call it a championship team.
04:46Yeah, we're three games in.
04:47But are they playing at a level that is at or near the top of the league?
04:51Sure.
04:52Of course they are.
04:53That much is obvious to all of us watching.
04:56But at least one side of the ball.
04:59When one side of the ball is on the field, and go ahead and just go with whatever your
05:04better side of the ball is.
05:06When they take the field, do you sort of feel as a fan like, okay, show's about to start.
05:14Lights have flickered.
05:15Get your popcorn.
05:17Show's about to start.
05:18When the Seattle defense took the field last year, show's about to start.
05:24When Ray Lewis' defense took the field, show's about to start.
05:28When Josh Allen walks out onto a football field, show's about to start.
05:33And I would say that right now about the San Francisco 49ers offense.
05:38When they walk out onto the field as a collective, the show's about to start.
05:42I don't really see right now.
05:44We're going to get a better look.
05:46They'll be in Seattle in 11 days.
05:48But I don't really see right now, most weeks, most weeks, what a defense is really supposed
05:58to do to stop this train when they've got the majority.
06:04All I'm going to say is, do you have even the majority of your pieces?
06:07They have not been sacked.
06:09They have turned the ball over one time.
06:11They have gone to the red zone and not come away with six once.
06:16These numbers are overwhelming.
06:19They are averaging 32.7 points per game so far on a young season.
06:25The 49er offense is a show.
06:27And when you have that level of swagger and effective outcome and all of those things,
06:34then yeah, man, you've got the goods.
06:36Like, that's how, for me, these three games, that's what they've said.
06:41I don't know if the goods will be available to them all year long because of injury.
06:47I don't know if somebody may crack a code.
06:50But that's sort of the way that I would phrase it right now.
06:53It's way too early for playoff talk.
06:56But they've got the goods.
06:58To me, they've got the goods.
07:00You've got the goods.
07:01You've got the goods.
07:01Yeah, for sure.
07:02And, you know, we talked about it during the crossover.
07:04Like, defense wins championships when you have to have a defense that wins a championship.
07:08And I was looking at Seattle in their 12-game winning streak that went through last year
07:13and into the first two weeks of this year.
07:15And they're giving up 14 points a game.
07:17And then Washington hit them for 33, which was, oh, you know, a weird game.
07:21Whatever.
07:21You'd won 12 in a row.
07:22They turned it over a bunch.
07:23They did.
07:24And so the Seattle defense, I'm not trying to skip ahead of Denver, although the Denver
07:28defense is not as good as what we would have thought so far through three games.
07:34I mean, Denver's D, they've been getting up a lot of points and a lot of yards on the
07:38ground, by the way.
07:39Something we can talk about with Greg Cosell tomorrow and even Mark Schlereth today.
07:44But the Seattle D and the 9-0, that to me is a classic, like, styles make fights in
07:49week five.
07:50But first, there's week four.
07:51And you have to go out there and continue to hum.
07:53Well, I also think this, and I, listen, at the risk of, and I know some of us old heads
07:59who've been watching Niner football for a long time, I don't mean to rattle your cage.
08:04I don't want to offend you.
08:07And for those of you who are only 30 or 35 or whatever, this is what it felt like when
08:15the Niners of the 80s and early 90s took the field.
08:19This is what it felt like.
08:20So before you go, oh, Mark thinks Brock Purdy is Joe Montana, didn't say that, but this
08:27team through three games is averaging more points per game than the 49ers have ever scored
08:33in their history as a franchise, ever.
08:36So this is what it felt like, and it's the reason Brock Purdy is getting so much love around
08:42the league right now.
08:43Because what happens is, and I just mean as a television product, if you've been a fan
08:50for a really long time, I wonder if you remember what it felt like to watch a 49er game.
08:56And the Niners would go out, and if they would win 24-10, you sort of walked away like, yeah,
09:02they were off today.
09:03And it didn't do much.
09:05There was no grinding out 17-16.
09:08There was none of this.
09:10They didn't win every week.
09:11Nobody does.
09:12But when they take the field, you were thinking, they're probably going to score a touchdown.
09:17And when the quarterback dropped back and threw the ball, you thought to yourself, it's probably
09:22going to be a completion.
09:23The confidence that you would have in watching a play develop on the offensive side of the
09:29football through these three games, this is what it used to feel like in the 80s and early
09:3590s when the Niner offense was on a football field.
09:38They just hummed.
09:39And I'm looking at the 89 stats, which is the second year in a row they won the Super Bowl.
09:44Montana threw for 70% completion, which led the league.
09:47Which nowadays, 70 is almost like garden variety.
09:50But back then, 70 was like, wow, he threw for 70% of his passes.
09:54Steve Young, by the way, 69.6 off the bench.
09:57He did start three games.
09:59Jerry Rice and John Taylor, both over 1,000 yards receiving.
10:03And Roger Craig with a quiet 1,054 on the ground and 473 through the air and some Brent Jones
10:10and all the rest of it.
10:11But like you're talking about, it was just boom, boom, boom.
10:14We're humming like the Warriors when they got KD.
10:16It's not a question of if, it's a question of when.
10:19When do we blow you out?
10:2131.6 points per game is the all-time high for the 49ers.
10:26That came in Steve Young's 1994 season.
10:29They scored over 500 points that year.
10:32That is the only time that's ever happened for the 49ers.
10:36And that's the watermark.
10:37That's the high mark for points.
10:40Points per game for the 49ers.
10:42In the NFL era.
10:43Yeah, I get that.
10:44Right, right.
10:44Because when they were 1948, Frankie Albert and company, they put up 495.
10:50They averaged 35 a game.
10:51Oh, I had him on my fantasy team.
10:53I crushed that year.
10:53That was in the AAFC.
10:55So pre-NFL.
10:56So I guess that doesn't really count in this overall NFL era.
11:01Yeah, for me it doesn't.
11:02But if it does for you, like Rocko.
11:04I mean, 48, I was like nine.
11:05So, I mean, I remember it well.
11:06It was a good year.
11:07Coming out of WW2.
11:10Times were tight.
11:11I do think the number will come down.
11:13I know the 49ers' adversity is coming because it always is.
11:17And I know tougher opponents and road games and all of those things.
11:21They still haven't gone into anyone else's house, if you will.
11:25I know the Niner fan base doesn't have a whole lot of houses that it visits.
11:29Seattle will be one of them here in a week and a half.
11:31And so, yeah, like I do think that number is going to come down.
11:34I'm not going to suggest to you right now that this is going to be the best
11:37Niner offense of all time.
11:39What I am going to suggest to you is that the Niners have the goods.
11:42They've got the pieces on offense.
11:44I don't really care about their age.
11:46Not at this hour.
11:48If I saw people look like they were done,
11:51like if I saw age leading to poor performance, Aaron Rodgers,
11:55as opposed to just stress in our minds because we've assumed they'll get hurt,
12:01then I'll get worried, but I don't see it.
12:03I don't see a dip in performance.
12:05I see a rise in performance.
12:06See a QB that doesn't turn the ball over and doesn't get sacked and is very accurate
12:10and makes great decisions.
12:12And so, yeah, they've got the goods.
12:15Now they've got to handle the journey.
12:18Right.
12:18Handle the journey.
12:19It doesn't mean you have to go 17-0.
12:21It just means, you know, the next two weeks, can you beat Denver and Seattle?
12:25If you're going to win one of the two, I'd rather have you beat Seattle, obviously,
12:28than Denver.
12:29But can you get through the next two at four and one and still be, quote,
12:33mostly healthy?
12:35And I do want to tell you, Brock Purdy needs 64 more pass attempts
12:39to qualify for the all-time QB rating leader.
12:43I did a little bit of a mathematical journey to see, like, the worst he can be
12:49to still be that guy.
12:50So I'll have that coming up.
12:52So can he just throw it away 61 times?
12:54No.
12:55He has 64 passes.
12:56He can't go 0 for 64.
12:57Let's go.
12:58Oh.