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SI's Albert Breer Picks the 49ers to Beat the Bengals in the Super Bowl

What Super Bowl hangover?

Grant Cohn

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws as Cincinnati Bengals defensive tackle DJ Reader (98) pressures him in the fourth quarter of the NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Francisco 49ers at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday, Oct 29, 2023.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws as Cincinnati Bengals defensive tackle DJ Reader (98) pressures him in the fourth quarter of the NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Francisco 49ers at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., on Sunday, Oct 29, 2023. / Albert Cesare/The Enquier / USA TODAY NETWORK
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What Super Bowl hangover?

Teams that lose the Super Bowl generally take a step back the following year (unless their quarterback is Tom Brady). The 49ers lost the Super Bowl just seven months ago. And yet, they still have the core of their elite roster intact. And that's one reason Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer has picked the 49ers to beat the Cincinnati Bengals 23 to 20 in the Super Bowl.

"I’m going with 2024 being The Year of Urgency," writes Breer. "The two teams I have standing at the end, the San Francisco 49ers and Cincinnati Bengals, are both likely to undergo some roster shifting over the next couple of years, based on how their contracts are set up. So this could be the last shot, not for the franchises (both are too well-positioned for that), but for the particular groups of players on those rosters right now. And those groups of players have knocked on the door for years, experienced seasons destroyed by injuries and are as talented as any in the NFL. To take it to another level: I almost picked the New York Jets to get by the Bengals in the divisional round and have their shot at the Chiefs, with the same dynamic existing there. So give me the same rematch of Super Bowls XVI and XXIII that I picked last year, but this time I’ll pick San Francisco coming out as the champion."

This is a perfectly reasonable prediction from Breer. But Burrow has finished two of his four seasons on the Injured Reserve List, so banking on him to stay healthy and lead Cincinnati to the Super Bowl seems like a long shot.

In addition, as long as Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid exist and are on the Chiefs, I'm picking Kansas City to win the Super Bowl every time.

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Grant Cohn
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.

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