There is no perfect Super Bowl profile, though we all try to come up with the formula. There can’t be a perfect profile because everything changes every year and every playoff game — it all depends on the matchup, the weather, the home field, injuries, luck, a hot receiver and maybe a cold kicker.
There can’t be a perfect Super Bowl model, though the 49ers have come pretty close with the regular season they just completed and the first-round bye week they are currently enjoying. They’re heavy favorites to get through the NFC tournament and into the playoffs. But you can’t guarantee a bit of it. Random things can and will occur at any time. Threats can prop up at any moment.
Advertisement
And Kyle Shanahan is all too clear about the biggest nightmare factor of all.
“Just the most generic way to say it: Most people, if you have your choice, you’d like to avoid the better quarterbacks,” Shanahan said last week on KNBR’s “Tolbert & Copes” show. “That’s always the hardest thing in the playoffs is the top quarterbacks.”
Yes, you could say that Shanahan is speaking from extremely painful experience, since he’s lost a Super Bowl (as Atlanta’s offensive coordinator) to New England’s Tom Brady and another (as 49ers coach in February 2020) to Patrick Mahomes and also lost NFC title games to the Rams’ Matthew Stafford (in January 2022) and the Eagles’ Jalen Hurts (in January 2023).
A team doesn’t absolutely need a superstar QB to win a Super Bowl, or else Nick Foles, Joe Flacco, Trent Dilfer and Mark Rypien wouldn’t have rings right now. But future Hall of Fame QBs are the ultimate big-game chaos agent — even if you’ve got the edge in every other category, you never know if and when the Great QB will just rise up and blow away all other elements.
Mahomes, for instance, has not exactly been supported by a great running game or overpowering defense in his two Super Bowl runs, but he’s thrown 17 touchdown passes and just 2 interceptions combined in those two postseasons, including a 7-0 ratio and 114.7 passer rating last January and February.
“Quarterbacks can be so good — there’s not 32 (great ones) in the world,” Shanahan said. “But when you get those guys who could just get on, who have that ability and have been playing all year and are in a good scheme and they can get hot, some of those guys, they’re just hard to deal with no matter how good of a defense you have.
“The best thing is when you can play against someone whether a guy’s hurt or they just struggle in that area, then usually a good defense can shut ’em down. You’ve got to make sure you don’t turn it over and things like that and make the game just a little bit easier. But when you’ve got guys who you know it could be a shootout and who are tougher to stop, you’re always going in hoping to change that. I mean, I don’t care who it is, everyone has off days, you can slow people down and you can stop ’em. But you’ve got to prepare throughout the week because you know what some of these guys are capable of. And you’ve got to be ready for that game to go any way possible.”
Advertisement
But here’s an interesting development for the 49ers this season: Brock Purdy isn’t on Mahomes’ level, but he’s certainly more of a nightmare factor for opponents than Jimmy Garoppolo ever was. If the 49ers are dragged into a shootout, Shanahan will happily take his chances with Purdy, who led qualified QBs with a 113.0 passer rating this regular season and had a 109.8 rating last postseason before his elbow was shredded in the NFC Championship Game loss to the Eagles.
Also, did you know that the 49ers have won more playoff games with Purdy as a starter (two) than the Ravens have won with MVP-to-be Lamar Jackson as a starter (one)? OK, OK, yes, Jackson sliced through the 49ers in the teams’ meeting last month, while Purdy threw four interceptions against the Ravens’ defense. There is a great chance that the 49ers are quietly hoping for another AFC team to pick off Baltimore before any potential rematch could materialize in the Super Bowl.
However, I’d put Purdy ahead of every playoff QB except Mahomes, Lamar, Josh Allen and Stafford, and I sure wouldn’t put him that far behind the last two names. I think Purdy right now is better than Matt Ryan was in his MVP season under Shanahan in Atlanta. I think he’s better than any QB Shanahan has ever had. And if opponents don’t think so, they might have to rethink that on the fly pretty soon.
This is a long way of getting into my traditional Super Bowl checklist and numbers crunching before the start of a 49ers postseason. (Here’s how it looked last January.) And since Shanahan started this out with the QB position — which I wholeheartedly endorse — let’s keep on that topic as we break down some categories.
Purdy fits right into the tier of QBs most likely to produce this season’s champion. He’s not at the top of that list, but he’s definitely on it.
Advertisement
I’ve said since December 2022 that Purdy reminds me of Russell Wilson during his bountiful early career in a lot of ways, and here’s another one: Wilson was very impressive as a rookie Seahawks Q, and then, as a supplement to an awesome defense and powerful running game, Wilson was the QB for the Seahawks’ Super Bowl 48 victory over the Broncos.
Seattle was 24-8 in Wilson’s first two regular seasons. The 49ers are 17-4 in Purdy’s regular-season starts. Wilson was 4-1 as a postseason starter after that Super Bowl was won. If the 49ers win in the divisional round then the conference championship, Purdy will be 4-1 as a postseason starter.
Also, Purdy’s sizzling passer rating is a strong indicator for playoff triumph. The last five Super Bowl-winning QBs finished in the top 10 in regular-season passer rating that year.
The list of current playoff QBs (not counting Pittsburgh’s Mason Rudolph, a non-qualifier but still was at 118.0) who failed to make the top 10 in passer rating is eye-catching: Green Bay’s Jordan Love (11th), Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield (12th), Mahomes of all people (14th), Stafford (15th), Allen (16th), Flacco (a non-qualifier who would’ve finished 20th) and Hurts (22nd).
Giving Rudolph and Pittsburgh a pass in this category, those left standing after the passer-rating cutoff are the 49ers, Dallas (Dak Prescott is second), Baltimore (Lamar is fourth), Miami (Tua Tagovailoa is fifth), Houston (C.J. Stroud is sixth) and Detroit (Jared Goff is ninth).
The last 14 teams that made the Super Bowl finished in the top 10 in regular-season offensive yards per play. The 49ers were first this season, at 6.6 yards per play. (They were fourth last year, at 5.9 yards per play.)
Current playoff teams that were below the 10th-place cutoff in yards per play this regular season: Philadelphia 12th, Houston 13th, Tampa Bay 20th, Pittsburgh 22nd and Cleveland 28th.
Advertisement
The Ravens were fourth at 5.9 yards per play.
Left standing after two categories: 49ers, Miami, Baltimore, Dallas and Detroit.
The 49ers’ defense allowed the seventh-fewest opponent yards per play in the regular season at 5.0. Great defensive statistics haven’t recently had a strong correlation to playoff success, but having a mediocre defense in the playoffs is problematic. The last four Super Bowl champions have ranked at least in the top 15 in this category.
Current playoff teams that weren’t top-15 in opponent yards per play: the Rams (19th), Green Bay (20th), Tampa Bay (22nd), Pittsburgh (23rd), Philadelphia (24th) and Detroit (26th).
The Ravens, by the way, allowed only 4.6 yards per play, third-best in the league. (If you’re sensing a 49ers-Ravens-both-have-great-profiles theme here, you’re catching on.)
Left standing after three categories: 49ers, Miami, Baltimore, Dallas.
The 49ers are the NFC’s 1 seed, which has been a 50-percent shot at the Super Bowl in recent years.
Since the start of the new playoff format three seasons ago, with the only first-round byes going to the conference 1 seeds, the 1 seeds have made it to the Super Bowl three out of six times. A 1 seed has only won one of those Super Bowls, but that one time was the Chiefs last season, over Philadelphia, another 1 seed.
I’m not going to weed anybody else out with this category, but oh yes, the Ravens are the AFC 1 seed.
The 49ers were third in the NFL with a plus-193 point differential during the regular season behind No. 1 Baltimore (plus-203) and No. 2 Dallas (plus-194).
In the past five seasons, there hasn’t been a Super Bowl champion that ranked lower than sixth in regular-season point differential.
Current playoff teams that were seventh or worse in point different this season: Detroit, Green Bay, Cleveland, Houston, Tampa Bay, the Rams, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Advertisement
No more teams were weeded out in this category. So what we’ve got: the 49ers, Baltimore, Miami and Dallas, all far ahead of the other 10 playoff teams. But I’m going to eliminate Miami from true Super Bowl consideration because of all the defensive injuries the Dolphins have suffered lately.
And if we’re using QB threat as the final and ultimate category, my ranking would be Lamar, Purdy and then Prescott, though that order could get adjusted on a week-to-week basis. If the 49ers are going to win the Super Bowl, all other categories being mostly equal, I think they’ll face at least one or two games when the other QB plays almost perfect football. And then Purdy, at least once or twice, is going to have to play nearly perfectly, too. The 49ers have their best shot at a Super Bowl in almost 30 years because Purdy is their best shot since then to make everything else almost irrelevant.
Before the games start, here are the postseason records of the current coaches just to keep it all in context, in order of total victories:
Kansas City’s Andy Reid: 22-16 (.579, two titles)
Baltimore’s John Harbaugh: 11-9 (.550, one title)
Dallas’ Mike McCarthy: 11-10 (.524, one title)
Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin: 8-9 (.471, one title)
Rams’ Sean McVay: 7-3 (.700, one title)
49ers’ Shanahan: 6-3 (.667)
Buffalo’s Sean McDermott: 4-5 (.444)
Green Bay’s Matt LaFleur: 2-3 (.400)
Philadelphia’s Nick Sirianni: 2-2 (.500)
Cleveland’s Kevin Stefanski: 1-1 (.500)
Miami’s Mike McDaniel: 0-1
Tampa Bay’s Todd Bowles: 0-1
Detroit’s Dan Campbell: 0-0
Houston’s DeMeco Ryans: 0-0
GO DEEPER
Nick Bosa sacks? Brock Purdy picks? A look back at 49ers preseason predictions
(Photo of Brock Purdy: Greg Fiume / Getty Images)
