Rams--not 49ers--are team Seahawks must worry about

From losing the Super Bowl to maybe losing control of the locker room, the 49ers would seem to be going in the wrong direction again: Seaside Joe 1812

The 2012-2015 Seattle Seahawks were a better team—significantly better!—than the 2019-2023 San Francisco 49ers. And the Seahawks haven’t been to an NFC Championship in nine years.

Nothing is guaranteed to the 49ers and my gut feeling headed into the offseason is that actually the Los Angeles Rams are the favorites to come out of the NFC next season.

Mike Macdonald and John Schneider have to build a roster that can beat both of those teams…

and the cardinals

But the Rams are probably going to be the tougher out next season.

Quarterback

I like Brock Purdy more than most and yet it’s impossible to argue away skepticism regarding his supporting cast. What if instead of Malik Willis or Desmond Ridder, the Titans or Falcons had drafted Purdy? How would Purdy have done on the Panthers if Carolina had selected him instead of Matt Corral? I don’t think those quarterbacks could have done as well in San Francisco as Purdy, but I don’t know that Purdy would be a success story if he had been drafted by any of those teams.

Matthew Stafford has proven for 15 years that his talent transcends coaching, system, and supporting cast.

Even if Stafford has one of those weird borderline debatable Hall of Fame cases (Super Bowl winner, super productive but was never one of the top-3, or even top-5 QBs in the league in any given season) we live in a time in which he represents for me the safest quarterback in the NFC going into 2024. Personally, I think he’s better than Purdy, Dak Prescott, Jalen Hurts, Kirk Cousins (free agent), and Jared Goff.

So off the bat, the Rams have relative strengths in the NFC at head coach and quarterback. It’s almost statistically impossible for Purdy to be better than he was last season—what goes up, must go down—and the likelihood of the 49ers losing key supporting cast players, suffering a higher rate of injuries, and defenses knowing better how to defend against Shanahan tells me that San Francisco won’t be as offensively potent in 2024.

The Super Bowl curse

It’s not so much that teams that reach the Super Bowl are cursed as it is that playing 19-20 games takes a toll on the body that can’t be adequately measured by analytics. As unfortunate as it is to mention, Dre Greenlaw doesn’t tear his Achilles if the 49ers don’t make the Super Bowl and the Seahawks can share their own experiences of suffering career-devastating injuries in the playoffs from 2012-2015.

Compare that to teams like the Seahawks that missed the playoffs, it’s an extra month of rest that hurts the soul by heals the body.

In reverse chronological order, we find that the Eagles were not as good in 2023 as they were in 2022; the Rams were far worse in 2022 than 2021; the last time San Francisco reached the Super Bowl they dropped from 13-3 to 6-10; when the Rams lost the year prior, they went from 13-3 to 9-7 and the Eagles had the same drop from 2017 to 2018; the 2016-17 Falcons, 2015-16 Panthers, and 2014-2015 Seahawks…

It’s well-documented that the second-most painful part of losing a Super Bowl is the realization that you may never make it back. Admitting this after the Lions lost the NFC Championship is only part of the reason that Dan Campbell is such a respectable head coach.

Then you can add schedule benefits and punishments to that, as the NFL’s mandate to create “parity” means that the Niners get the first-place schedule, the Rams get second, and the Seahawks get third.

These differences add up to the 49ers playing the Chiefs, Cowboys, and Bucs; the Rams playing the Raiders, Eagles, and Saints; while the Seahawks draw the Broncos, Giants, and Falcons.

Because of where they finished in 2023, the 49ers get a rematch with the Chiefs while the Rams get the Raiders and the Seahawks get the Broncos. Those differences would be enough on their own, but then Seattle also get the Giants instead of the Cowboys or Eagles? Great.

The Niners have gone 13-4 and 12-5 in the past two seasons, it would surprise me if they won 12 games again in 2024 just based on the probabilities of regression and a higher rate of injuries, the tougher schedule, and the shorter offseason.

The Rams went 10-7, had a longer break, and survived injuries to key players like Cooper Kupp, Stafford, and Kyren Williams.

Nick Bosa isn’t Aaron Donald

I briefly listened to a 49ers podcast hosted by Grant Cohn and though he’s notoriously labeled as a “hater” who covers that team, I’d put a higher amount of trust in someone who criticizes the franchise that they cover over one who exclusively praises them. One of the huge points for Cohn is that Steve Wilks—who was fired this week—was thrown under the bus not only by Kyle Shanahan, but also by San Francisco’s best defensive players.

People are reading into these post-Super Bowl quotes by Bosa as the reason why:

"The zone read got us a couple of times,” Bosa said. “We could have been more prepared there. We have to know in crucial situations who is going to have the ball, and obviously it’s him. He had a scramble down the middle on that last drive.”

“He is who he is for a reason,” Bosa said of Mahomes. “You have to keep your confidence up and not anticipate him to make these plays. But there were some where I think, if obviously we could get them back, we would have been more prepared.”

Cohn argued that though Bosa used to set the edge and play run defense, he stopped doing that after he was paid a five-year, $170 million contract extension in 2023 and that he’s solely focused on his sack totals. Apparently it’s not working, Bosa’s sacks dropped from 18.5 to 10.5. And the 49ers run defense has been atrocious in the past two months, from allowing 234 rushing yards to the Cardinals in mid-December to give up 150 yards per game in the playoffs.

As Cohn sees it, the rest of San Francisco’s defensive line follows Bosa’s lead, not Shanahan or Wilks. Does Bosa respect coaches? He makes a hell of a lot more money than they do. Another interesting point in the show is that the Niners could struggle to get a better defensive coordinator than Wilks because coaches have seen how they’re treated if the team doesn’t win (owner Jed York and Shanahan surely won’t take blame willingly) and you can’t hire your own assistants either.

In Seattle, it’s been a collaborative coaching hire process for John Schneider and Mike Macdonald. Though I won’t get ahead of myself in congratulating the Seahawks on any hires before games are played, I can accept that Sean McVay seems to do that part right for the Rams.

The 49ers didn’t really get any of their coaches promoted except for Klint Kubiak becoming the Saints offensive coordinator. Meanwhile, with fewer wins and no playoff wins, the Rams saw Raheem Morris become a head coach and four other coaches become offensive, defensive, and special teams coordinators around the NFL. Even Seattle took Jake Peetz off of McVay’s staff—the second in three years—to become passing game coordinator.

Shanahan and McVay have been NFC West head coaches for the same number of years and reached the same number of Super Bowls, yet McVay’s coaching tree is much, much bigger. Why is that? His coaches seem to do better, get more opportunities, and therefore the best candidates seem to gravitate towards L.A..

That’s concerning for the Seahawks until Macdonald proves he can be what many have already referred to him as: “The defensive McVay”.

Okay, here’s the sentence where I say—If you’re a free subscriber, maybe today is a good day to finally join the Regular Joes premium club. It’s only $5 for a month or $55 for an entire year:

As far as Donald, I wonder if he was not a better player in 2023 than Bosa even though he’s six years older and was expected to be near the end of his career. While Donald is one of the top-10 players of all-time in my opinion, Bosa isn’t one of the top-10 right now. The season he just had may not even been a top-10 just on defense and yet he’s making $34 million per year, the most ever by a defensive player.

I think Donald was more effective and disruptive, did more for his teammates, and nobody has ever questioned his commitment or effort. When he was at Pitt, Donald would show up 30 minutes early to practice and get started, I think because he just doesn’t know what else to do with his life but be a great football player. If he doesn’t retire, Donald will be 33 next year and I would still expect him to be one of the top-5 defensive tackles in the league, if not the best.

Salary Capped

The 49ers are projected to be $12.3 million over the 2024 cap and yet I think the more improtant number is that San Francisco is projected for only $25.5 million in cap space in 2025. That will make it hard to sign free agents or to retain their own, as usually teams push their financial commitments into next season. The Niners barely have any cap space next season and they might need to give Purdy a huge extension in 2025 if he plays well again.

What the 49ers can do is restructure a few deals to save cap space in 2024, but again this will only lower their cap space in 2025.

But really the issue facing San Francisco is just how they will replace players who will soon be out of their prime, if not out of the league: 36-year-old Trent Williams, 28-year-old Christian McCaffrey, 31-year-olds George Kittle, Arik Armstead, and Javon Hargrave. The 49ers will need to go back to hitting on their mid-round draft picks, something that hasn’t happened very often recently.

Their last day two slam dunk was Deebo Samuel in 2019.

Comparatively, the Rams have a higher first round pick (19 vs. 31) and they just had one of hteir best drafts in years, if not one of the best classes by any team in the last decade: WR Puka Nacua and DT Kobie Turner were immediate stars, LG Steve Avila and EDGE Byron Young are good starters already, and I’d advise you to keep an eye on TE Davis Allen, CB Tre Tomlinson, OLB Ochaun Mathis and Nick Hampton.

From two drafts ago, they added Ernest Jones, one of the best ILB in the league last season, and then Kyren Williams in 2022, he led the NFL in rushing yards per game in 2023.

With a first round pick (if they use it, it’ll be the first time the Rams made a first round pick since Jared Goff in 2016), $27.7 million in cap space in 2024, and $80 million in cap space in 2025, I expect L.A. general manager Les Snead to go back to being the most aggressive GM in the offseason. Look for the Rams to potentially trade the first rounder for a superstar similar to past moves for Stafford and Jalen Ramsey, and to go get at least a couple of high-end starters in free agency. The benefits of the 2023 class are that now the Rams can go spending again.

Wrap a bow on this article by highlighting that McVay has dominated the Seahawks (but not Macdonald) for the past seven seasons and I think that’s why I would say the L.A. Rams are a much more significant threat to Seattle’s chances of winning the division than the San Francisco 49ers.

If it could happen to a better Seahawks team, it could definitely happen to Kyle Shanahan’s team.