All 49ers

The 49ers Fall to No. 18 in NFL.com's Week 16 Power Rankings

We're starting to learn who the 2024 49ers are.

Grant Cohn

Dec 12, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on the sideline during the fourth quarter against the Los Angeles Rams at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Dec 12, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on the sideline during the fourth quarter against the Los Angeles Rams at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
In this story:

We're starting to learn who the 2024 49ers are.

They don't rise to the occasion. They find ways to lose games against merely decent teams. That's why they're 6-8 and don't have one impressive win on their resume this season. They're one of the biggest disappointments in the NFL despite their injuries.

And now, after their 12-6 loss to the Rams this past week, they've fallen to no. 18 in NFL.com's Week 16 power rankings.

"You couldn't produce more night-and-day performances than the 49ers did in Weeks 14 and 15," writes NFL.com analyst Eric Edholm. "Determined and dominant against the Bears, sloppy and punchless against the Rams -- all in a span of five days. Nonetheless, the big picture reveals the bigger truth, after four losses in five games: It was just never San Francisco’s season. Injuries were the biggest story. But the 49ers also underachieved at times, with the Chicago game a stark reminder of that. After all, you can't say the Niners were healthy for that one, really. They technically were more healthy against the Rams, getting Nick Bosa and Dre Greenlaw back from injury, and they still lost. Adding insult to the injury debate was De'Vondre Campbell's refusal to play, which led to even more armchair evaluation about the health of the team -- as well as a three-game suspension for the linebacker. That post-Bears afterglow sure was fleeting."

To be fair, the 49ers' defense was not sloppy and punchless -- it was inspired (minus the 14-yard catch it gave up to a wide-open Colby Parkinson on 3rd and 4 that set up the Rams' game-sealing field goal late in the fourth quarter. What the heck was that?) No, it was Kyle Shanahan's offense that was sloppy and punchless. And the offense can't blame the rain for its performance because it played even worse when the rain let up.

This offseason, the 49ers have to figure out why their offense regressed so dramatically despite excellent seasons from George Kittle, Jauan Jennings and Jordan Mason.

Download and follow The Cohn Zohn Podcast.

Published
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.

Home/News