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The 49ers Climb to No. 20 in NFL.com's Week 18 Power Rankings

Was the loss the Lions a moral victory?

Grant Cohn

December 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall (14) catches the football against the Detroit Lions during the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
December 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall (14) catches the football against the Detroit Lions during the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images / Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
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The 49ers have lost three games in a row and six of their past seven.

And yet, they climbed from No. 21 to No. 20 in NFL.com's power rankings after losing 40-34 to the Detroit Lions.

"If you're a 49ers fan, you had to love what you saw from Ricky Pearsall against the Lions on Monday," writes NFL.com analyst Eric Edholm. "His opportunities have been limited, but he gave the team an early spark and turned in the best game of his career four months after being shot in the chest. You can just envision all the wonderful ways Kyle Shanahan will scheme up plays to this dude the next few years. We also saw a highly motivated and dialed-in Brock Purdy, looking like a man eager to answer questions about a potential forthcoming extension with as sharp a first half as he's had this season. Then again, his two second-half interceptions turned the game in the Lions' favor, and he left late with an elbow injury. It's been that kind of year, and it's feeling more and more like a redux of 2020. The debate over Purdy's contract will dominate the coming weeks, but there are still plenty of reasons to think a bounceback for this team is entirely possible, even if the Niners truly missed the window in which Purdy was paid at a pauper rate."

I disagree with Edholm's analysis for a couple reasons.

1. In 2020, 49ers starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and Nick Bosa missed a combined 24 games. That's why they had such a down year. This season, Brock Purdy and Bosa have missed a combined four games, and yet the 49ers are 6-10. This season has been worse than 2020.

2. Are there really plenty of reasons to think the 49ers will bounce back next season? Will Christian McCaffrey be Christian McCaffrey ever again? I'm not so sure. Without him, the 49ers aren't particularly good.

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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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