–Playing twice in a three-week span is unusual in the NFL, but that’s what the Seahawks and 49ers will do in Santa Clara on Sunday. But head coach Pete Carroll isn’t putting too much stock in what happened in Seattle’s 43-16 win, noting that San Francisco played very well in a victory over the Broncos last week.
“We just played these guys a couple weeks ago, but we do everything like it’s a brand-new game and start all over again,” Carroll said on Wednesday. “The Niners played really good last week against Denver. Really played an explosive game early in particular and controlled the score the whole time, played really good football.”
Carroll was quick to point out that despite a 3-10 record, the 49ers rank highly in several offensive and defensive categories. San Francisco currently sits eighth in the NFL averaging nearly 128 rushing yards per game, while they also rank 10th in total yardage as a defense.
The biggest problem for the 49ers through 13 games? Along with a plethora of injuries, including losing starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to a torn ACL, they rank dead last in turnover differential. They’ve turned the ball over 21 more times than their opponents, a huge factor in their poor win-loss record.
–Coming off an emotional Monday night win over the Vikings, it would be easy for the Seahawks to overlook the underwhelming 49ers on Sunday. But defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr. isn’t concerned at all about his defense treating this as a “trap” game, saying the group is too young to know what that is.
“You know, you have to be around a while to understand that,” Norton said. “They just love ball, they just understand, they’re always trying to find different ways to be coached and we like what we see, the guys are playing at a really high level. … We’re trying to win some ball games, we’re trying to stack up wins – that’s all that really matters right now.”
If anything, the Seahawks defense should be motivated after a somewhat uneven performance against the 49ers at CenturyLink on December 2. Though they held San Francisco to under three yards per carry on the ground, third-string quarterback Nick Mullens threw for 414 yards and two touchdowns, benefiting from poor tackling by Seattle’s secondary.
–Speaking about the familiarity between the Seahawks and 49ers, linebacker Bobby Wagner says the greatest challenge playing the same team twice in such a short time period comes down to the ability to watch film and prepare.
He said, “You kind of see what they did good and they’re going to go back to it. They also see the plays that they could have got that they didn’t, that they probably should have used more of. In our position, we won the game, but you don’t want to get complacent and thinking the same thing is gonna happen again.”
With the playoffs well out of the picture, the 49ers have nothing to lose. Wagner believes the Seahawks need to treat this like a championship game against a rival that would love nothing more than to hold off a potential playoff berth for at least one more week with the upset.
“We’re coming off a short week, so we have to make sure that our focus and everything is that much more sharper,” Wagner said. “And understand this is a hungry team. Whenever you come out and beat a team the way we did, they’re not just gonna let you do that again, so we have to make sure we approach the game that way. They’re gonna throw a little bit more wrinkles in, they’re gonna run more things that they had success on, and just be ready.”
BY THE NUMBERS: 52.38 – Red-zone touchdown percentage for Seattle’s opponents, ninth-best in the NFL.
