All 49ers

Why the 49ers Probably Won't Win the NFC West

The 49ers' most realistic path to the playoffs is through the wild card if they beat the Packers this Sunday.

Grant Cohn

November 17, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel Sr. (1) runs the football against the Seattle Seahawks during the fourth quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
November 17, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel Sr. (1) runs the football against the Seattle Seahawks during the fourth quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images / Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
In this story:

Technically, the 49ers are in last place in the NFC West.

And yet, they have the same record as the Seahawks and Rams -- they're all 5-5. And the division-leading Cardinals are 6-4. Which means that the 49ers are just a game out of first-place, right?

Not exactly.

The 49ers already have lost to each team in the NFC West once. Best-case scenario, the 49ers will beat the Rams and Cardinals, split with all three NFC West teams and finish 3-3 in the division. But even if they do all of that and finish the regular season tied for first place in the division, they'll probably lose the tiebreaker.

Here's how that works.

When two teams finish tied for first place in a division, the first tiebreaker is head-to-head matchups. So if one team beat the other team twice, the winning team gets the tiebreaker. But the 49ers won't beat any NFC West team twice this season. And it's possible they'll lose twice to the Cardinals and/or the Rams.

If the 49ers split with all three teams and finished tied for first place in the division, the second tiebreaker is record within the division. And again, best-case scenario the 49ers finish 3-3 in the NFC West. So it's unlikely they'd win that tiebreaker, either.

To truly win the NFC West, the 49ers probably would have to have the best record in the division, which means they'd have to make up two games on the Cardinals who have a relatively easy schedule the rest of the way.

The 49ers' most realistic path to the playoffs is through the wild card if they beat the Packers this Sunday.

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