Why the 49ers Should Beat the Eagles in Week 13

They have extra time to prepare because they played on Thursday, and they need the win more than the Eagles do.

Grant Cohn | Nov 27, 2023

Why the 49ers Should Beat the Eagles in Week 13 /

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers aren't necessarily better than the Eagles, but there are good reasons the 49ers will be 2.5-point favorites on the road in Philadelphia next week.

One reason is the Eagles don't necessarily need to win this game. Their record is 10-1. The 49ers are 8-3. So if the 49ers win, the Eagles still would have a better record than them. They'd be 10-2, while the 49ers would be 9-3. Meaning the Eagles still would have the inside track for the No. 1 seed, a first-round bye and home field throughout the playoffs.

In addition, this game is the 49ers' Super Bowl before the Super Bowl. They're returning to the site of the previous NFC Championship where Brock Purdy tore the UCL in his throwing elbow on the 49ers' first offensive drive and the game was over before it started. The 49ers still believe they would have won that game if Purdy hadn't gotten injured, and this is their opportunity to prove themselves right.

Meanwhile, the Eagles just proved themselves the past two weeks by coming from behind to beat the Super Bowl Champion Chiefs, and then the Bills for good measure. They don't have anything to prove this week against the 49ers. They already beat the 49ers last year. And the Eagles have lots of injuries -- they might not have Lane Johnson or Fletcher Cox. So if they lose, they can tell themselves they weren't at full strength and they'll beat the 49ers in the playoffs if they meet again.

The 49ers should win this game. They have extra time to prepare because they played on Thursday, and they need the win more than the Eagles do.

Let's see if the 49ers can make a statement.

Published Nov 27, 2023

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.