Kurtenbach: The zombie 49ers keep marching after a stubborn, improbable playoff win
By all rights, the San Francisco 49ers’ season should have ended in October. That’s when superstar linebacker Fred Warner’s ankle snapped early in the team’s Week 6 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Or maybe the funeral should have been held in September, when superstar pass rusher Nick Bosa’s knee buckled in Week 3.
Or perhaps the kill shot actually came in Week 1, when Brock Purdy picked up a nagging turf-toe injury that refused to properly heal for 10 weeks.
And if the Football Gods spared the Niners then, then surely they saved it all for a truly cruel ending on Sunday, when, amid the whipping winds and batteries of Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, George Kittle was carted off the field with a torn right Achilles tendon.
That moment should have turned the gray chill of this playoff game into a full-blown wake. It was 67,000 properly lubricated Philadelphians screaming for blood against a team stripped of its stars. The Eagles were the defending Super Bowl champs. Like every other team San Francisco has faced this season, they were the healthier squad.
How much can one team take? How much can one team survive?
We’re still asking that question because the 49ers refuse to submit.
The 49ers’ season is not over because, as the Eagles found out the hard way on Sunday, you can’t kill what is already dead.
After an improbable 23-19 win in Philly, the zombie 49ers will continue their march for at least another week; the division rival Seahawks are up next.
And who is to say that will be the end of this improbable, commendable run?
Because who, honestly, saw this win coming from the Niners on Sunday?
They were starting practice squad linebackers Garret Wallow and Eric Kendricks — guys who were street free agents little more than a month ago — in a road playoff game.
They have been stripped down to the frame on the defensive line.
Offensively, they were treating Demarcus Robinson, who barely saw the field for weeks at a time this season, like a No. 1 wideout, targeting him early and often against an All-Pro Eagles secondary.
They had Jauan Jennings, a receiver, stepping in as a de facto tight end following Kittle’s injury because, well, someone had to block on the edge.
Fullback Kyle Juszczyk became a go-to pass-catching threat because any open man would do down the stretch.
They even had Jennings throw the ball. Why not? What did they have to lose by trying a trick play to start the fourth quarter of a tight playoff game?
The Niners had to invent ways to stay in Sunday’s game. They invented enough to win it.
This wasn’t just an upset — it was a testament to a program that has hardened to the point of imperviousness. This team is a machine that doesn’t just survive attrition; it seems to feed on it.
Its byproduct is belief.
Indescribable, illogical and oh-so powerful belief.
Brock Purdy threw two interceptions Sunday and still looked like the calmest man in the Eastern Time Zone. Christian McCaffrey, battered, bruised and looking entirely juiceless in the first half, summoned his best football for the second, catching two touchdowns — including an exceptional tracking corral of Jennings’ 29-yard throw. He ducked, weaved and spun to find the extra inches in a game where the margins were tight enough that those inches mattered.
This roster is held together by sheer willpower, yet they just handed the defending Super Bowl champions their first-ever home playoff loss of Nick Sirianni’s tenure in charge, perhaps ending that tenure in the process.
No, it doesn’t make sense. But nothing about this 49ers season has.
But it doesn’t have to. As the Niners are proving: Stubbornness, some good play calls, and, oh yeah, a pretty good quarterback, can take you a long way in this league.
“Our heart just prevailed,” Kendricks told KNBR after the game.
Rarely do we talk about NFL teams as “programs.” That’s for the college game, where the head coach is the star and the difference between the haves and have-nots is massive.
No, the NFL is a league of rule-mandated parity, and while some teams’ foundational dysfunction prevents them from ever taking advantage of those rules, the vast majority of organizations don’t stay down long. High draft picks, easier schedules, free agency and the weird bounces of an oblong ball bring nearly everyone back toward the middle.
But what the Niners are doing this season is well beyond regression to the mean.
No, fate has been mean to San Francisco, and it delivered another buckling blow Sunday with Kittle’s injury.
But yet again, the 49ers punched back.
The program in Santa Clara might just be the strongest in the league.
Kyle Shanahan takes a lot of grief for his supposed inability to win “big games.” Sunday seemed like a pretty big game to me.
How’d they do it?
Well, it’s said that genius can be found in desperation. What happens when someone who’s already a genius is put in that same situation?
When you can’t run through the wall, and you can’t jump over it, you hand the ball to your battering-ram receiver and ask him to throw a deep-pass dime on the windiest day of the season.
That trickle-down stubbornness is the only reason San Francisco is still playing.
It’s why Purdy didn’t flinch after his picks. A quarterback with a fragile psyche checks down for the rest of the game to protect his stat line. Purdy kept firing layered passes into tight windows because the play calls demanded it, and his coach expected him to make them.
He did, going 5-of-7 with ruthless precision on the game-winning drive — capped by a McCaffrey touchdown catch with a little more than five minutes to go.
Sure, there is a fine line between delusion and conviction, but on Sunday, the 49ers walked it perfectly.
They refused to acknowledge that they were outmanned. They substituted for All-Pros and first-round picks with street free agents and rookies on defense and didn’t simplify the play sheet. In fact, they were more aggressive: That had to be the most defensive coordinator Robert Saleh has blitzed all year.
The Niners threw caution to the wind on a day with 35-mile-per-hour gusts.
Because in January, when the attrition rate hits 100 percent, you go as far as your culture takes you.
And the 49ers — broken, battered and limping — are stubbornly, brilliantly, still playing because they have one hell of a culture.