Can the Ravens Beat the 49ers?

The 49ers blow out teams seemingly every week -- they look like a juggernaut. But it's important to remember the 49ers play in the NFC, which is a dreadful conference.

Grant Cohn | Dec 20, 2023

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers are the best team in the NFL, and they haven't faced a team as good as the Ravens yet. Both of those statements can be true.

The 49ers blow out teams seemingly every week -- they look like a juggernaut. But it's important to remember the 49ers play in the NFC, which is a dreadful conference. They're 9-1 against NFC teams, as they should be. But they're only 2-2 against the AFC, with wins over the Steelers and Jaguars, and losses to the Browns and Bengals. And the Ravens are better than all of those teams.

The NFC is soft, and the 49ers are not, so they tend to steamroll teams in their own conference. But the best teams in the AFC are extremely physical. So when the 49ers faced the Browns in Week 6, the Browns beat them up. Knocked out Deebo Samuel and Christian McCaffrey from the game. Beat the 49ers with a practice squad quarterback.

The Ravens are tougher than the Browns.

The Ravens are extremely violent on defense -- they have the No. 1 defense in the NFL. Plus they have a relentless, physical, explosive run game behind a big, punishing offensive line. The 49ers will not be able to bully them, because they're bigger bullies. The 49ers will have to win this game with intelligence and skill, which they have in spades.

If the 49ers beat the Ravens, it will be hard to find a team that can stop the 49ers from winning the Super Bowl.

If the 49ers lose, we'll have to wonder if they're dominant merely in the NFC.

Published Dec 20, 2023

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.