Kurtenbach: For the 49ers and Seahawks, familiarity only breeds confusion

There is a specific kind of insanity reserved for playoff games between two teams from the same division. It is a distinct flavor of madness, separate but amplified by the usual January anxiety.

These teams do not just play each other; they live together: they share the same atmospheric rivers, the same East Coast apathy toward everything in the Pacific Time Zone, and the same enemies.

But just because the Seahawks and 49ers both hate the Rams does not make them friends.

When the Niners and ‘Hawks meet on Saturday, there will be no secrets, no new identities, no sneak attacks. There is only the uncomfortable, glaring stare of two people who have been stuck together in the same room for longer than either would like.

“You definitely can’t overthink it, but it’s also, at the same time, kind of hard to overthink,” Kyle Shanahan said Tuesday.

What are we supposed to think about that?

Yes, it’s all enough to drive a coach, a team, and a fanbase mad.

And on Saturday, each team is counting on the other side to be the first to break from the cognitive pressure.

It’s long been said that familiarity breeds contempt.

But in this case, it should only cause confusion.

All this familiarity makes this game — this rubber match for all the marbles in this rivalry — almost impossible to call.

Consider the setup: Saturday’s game defies the standard rhythm of the postseason. The Seahawks haven’t played a snap of football since facing the 49ers in Week 18. The players have been resting, healing, and presumably watching tape in a dark room in suburban Seattle this whole time.

The 49ers, conversely, have been in the trenches. They had to go out and find their soul again against the Philadelphia Eagles. And they did, mostly. The defense flew around with renewed violence, and the offense found a rhythm in the second half.

But the Niners found it at a cost. George Kittle is gone, again. The people’s tight end, who missed most of these teams’ Week 1 matchup, is out. He leaves a personality void as big as the production one. In a vacuum, you look at a team losing its emotional North Star, and you write them off.

But January football is not a vacuum.

It’s chaos, and fairness has no quarter here.

If you are a Seahawks partisan, you are feeling good. Exceptionally good. Too good?

You go into the game knowing your world-class defense hasn’t forgotten how to play during the bye week. You are looking at a unit that is rested, prepped, and playing with the swagger of a team that beat San Francisco up, down, left, right, and center just two weeks ago. The scoreboard from Week 18 didn’t tell the full story: The Seahawks dominated that game.

If you are inside the 49ers’ facility, however, you are looking at the exact same game tape and telling yourself a story about variance.

San Francisco can look at the film and say, with a straight face, “We win this game if the ball bounces 2 inches to the left.”

It’s easy to convince oneself that if Yetur Gross-Matos simply falls on a loose ball, or if Christian McCaffrey doesn’t bobble a pass directly into the waiting arms of Drake Thomas, the narrative of that contest is flipped.

Then they can point to the NFL’s turnover leaderboard, where Sam Darnold sits at the summit: the king of chaos. (That’s not a compliment.)

Are the Niners delusional? Maybe.

But that’s a perk of the familiarity trap. Both teams have enough evidence to believe they are the superior squad if the football gods bless them for just one more day. More importantly, both teams will go into Saturday’s game convinced they know how to break the other team.

The Seahawks have the tangible proof of victory and the fresh legs. The Niners have the “mojo” — that intangible, shimmering dust that settles on a team after a gritty playoff win — and the belief that the law of averages is coming for Darnold.

They might have linebacker extraordinaire Fred Warner, too. Don’t rule him out for Saturday just yet.

So, what happens when self-serving narratives collide with a deep (and recent) history?

Things get weird.

Deep familiarity often short-circuits game plans. Coaches, terrified that the opponent knows exactly what’s coming, start overcorrect. They install trick plays that haven’t been practiced since August. They try to out-smart the guy across the sideline, and, in turn, out-smart themselves.

Or perhaps it goes the other way: the familiarity creates a doldrums. A stalemate. Both teams know the counters to the counters. The game becomes a heavyweight fight, with no one throwing a haymaker because they are too busy blocking the jab. The game becomes three hours of field position, punts, and 2-yard runs.

The Niners believe if they attack X, Y, and Z differently than in Week 18, they win. Seattle believes that if they just show up and be themselves, they win.

The reality is likely somewhere in the gray, murky middle. (What else do you expect from a game in Seattle?)

But that means this epic showdown will probably be decided by something egregiously stupid: A tipped pass. A slipped cleat. A referee interpretation that no one understands or can justify. A critical two-point conversion that everyone thought was a fumble. (Wait, that already happened for the Seahawks this season? Scratch that from the list.)

The Seahawks have the advantages on paper and in the most recent game film. The Niners have the grievance and the “what-if” fuel. Saturday isn’t just about strategy; it’s about which team can ignore the fact that they have no mental advantage and do what they want anyway.

Bragging rights for months, maybe years, are on the table.

The loser goes home to think about how they let their rival steal what was theirs.

The winner moves on, battered but breathing.

Prediction? I’ll try tomorrow, but what a fool’s errand that will be.

Because in a rivalry this deep, the only guarantee is that nothing will make sense until the clock hits zero.