SB Nation Reacts: Confidence in the 49ers continues to climb

The 49ers always play well when folks expect them to lose

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It’s NFC Championship Sunday, and if you would’ve told me a few months ago that the 49ers earned a spot in the game without scoring an offensive touchdown, I wouldn’t have believed you. But that’s what they did, and somehow, someway, San Francisco’s Super Bowl dreams and quest for six are still alive. It’s crazy to think the No. 6 and No. 4 seed are doing battle for a spot in the Super Bowl, but the Niners road win at frozen Lambeau has fan confidence growing by the week. According to 49ers fans, 94 percent believe the team is headed in the right direction. That a slight growth from last week’s 90 percent. The Niners keep winning, and that number keeps going up.

The Niners would surely like to make things 3-0 against the Rams this season, but to do that, they need good Jimmy G to show up and make accurate throws and hit receivers downfield. The thing is — early on versus the Packers — Jimmy DID do that, but our receivers simply couldn’t catch them.

If the Jimmy that was down 17-0 to this same Rams team shows up, we’ll do just fine. You have to acknowledge that we still somehow eliminated Dak Prescott and Aaron Rodgers from the playoffs, but it wasn’t squarely on Jimmy. In fact, it was in spite of Jimmy. As a result, most NFL fans seem to think the 49ers are the worst of the four remaining teams in the playoffs. Can ya blame them?

The key to a NFC Championship win for the Niners is their pass rush. In two games, the Niners managed to sack seven times while blitzing him only 12.5 percent of his dropbacks. While Matt Stafford is normally cool under pressure, the Niners’ defense did more than enough to render him helpless in the previous two contests. With Nick Bosa looking as strong as ever off the edge, it’s easy to believe the NFC Championship Game will be no different.

Nationally though, fans aren’t too thrilled about seeing the Niners play for their sixth Super Bowl ring. According to our national question, fans would most like to see the Rams and Chiefs do battle, then the Bengals and Rams, THEN the Bengals and Niners, and finally a Super Bowl LIV rematch of the Chiefs and Niners.

For now, all we as Niners fans should be worried about is going 3-0 at Levi’s South this NFC Championship Sunday. And DraftKings Sportsbook has San Francisco has 3.5 point underdogs in this dog fight. We play well when folks expect us to lose. Game on.

Odds/lines subject to change. T&Cs apply. See draftkings.com/sportsbook for details.

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