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Where the Lions are Better than the 49ers

The Lions pose certain challenges because they're better than the 49ers in certain areas.

Grant Cohn

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The 49ers are objectively better than the Detroit Lions. That's why the 49ers are seven-point favorites even though Deebo Samuel might not play.

But the Lions pose certain challenges because they're better than the 49ers in certain areas.

The first area is the offensive line. The 49ers have a great left tackle and not much else, while the Lions have an excellent left tackle, an excellent center and the best right tackle in football. They invest heavily in their offensive line while the 49ers don't. And that's because their quarterback, Jared Goff, is a statue, while 49ers quarterback, Brock Purdy, can move and avoid pressure on his own.

The problem for the Lions is that their left guard, Jonah Jackson, won't play in the NFC Championship and their center, Frank Ragnow, is beat up, so the 49ers should be able to get pressure in Goff's face, and that's his kryptonite.

Another area the Lions are better than the 49ers is run defense. The Lions gave up 3.8 yards per carry in the regular season (5th best in the NFL) while the 49ers gave up 4.2 yards per carry (17th best in the league). Both teams want to run the ball and have excellent running backs they can hand off to. The difference is the Lions have shown the ability to stop the run while the 49ers have struggled to do so all season, including last week in the divisional playoff game against the Packers.

If the 49ers let the Lions rush for more than 150 yards, Detroit could win.

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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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