49ers-Ravens: San Francisco's biggest test yet has one seed and MVP ramifications
The phrase 'game of the year' has been attached to a couple of contests involving the San Francisco 49ers already this year. Both those games, wins over the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, ended in blowouts that helped solidify the 49ers' status as the class of the NFC. Yet there's reason to believe their Christmas […]
The phrase 'game of the year' has been attached to a couple of contests involving the San Francisco 49ers already this year.
Both those games, wins over the Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles, ended in blowouts that helped solidify the 49ers' status as the class of the NFC.
Yet there's reason to believe their Christmas Day clash with the Baltimore Ravens will be more deserving of such a moniker. It pits two teams with identical 11-3 records against each other and, with the Ravens occupying the top seed in the AFC and the 49ers residing in the same position in the NFC, the phrase 'Super Bowl preview' has also been attached to the festive blockbuster at Levi's Stadium.
Should San Francisco prevail, the 49ers will be a win away from clinching the one seed, a first-round bye and homefield advantage throughout the playoffs.
Beyond that, it is a game that could go a long way to deciding the MVP race, with frontrunner Brock Purdy poised to face a huge test of what head coach Kyle Shanahan identified as his best trait.
An exceptionally rare meeting
The 49ers' meeting with the Ravens is their first with Baltimore since 2019, when a last-second Justin Tucker field goal condemned them to a 20-17 defeat on a road in a thrilling Week 13 game that was also viewed as a potential Super Bowl preview.
Only the 49ers ended up playing in the Super Bowl, suffering an agonizing loss having led with seven minutes remaining.
Games between San Francisco and Baltimore are rare, and this one marks only the third between two teams with the outright best record in football since the 1970 merger, and it features the top three contenders for the MVP award.
MVP ramifications
Much of the conversation in the wake of the 49ers' NFC West-clinching win over the Arizona Cardinals last week surrounded whether Purdy or running back Christian McCaffrey should be MVP.
Last week Purdy registered his sixth game of the season with a passer rating of at least 130.0. Should he produce another against the Ravens, he will become the first quarterback in NFL history to record seven. Doing so on a national stage in primetime against an opponent of the caliber of the Ravens may be enough to clinch him the MVP, depending on what teammate McCaffrey does.
Purdy declared after the win over the Cardinals that McCaffrey should be MVP, the star tailback having scored a hat-trick against Arizona.
McCaffrey can reach a host of milestones against the Ravens. With one reception, he will surpass Marshall Faulk as the fastest running back to 500 catches in NFL history.
Leading the NFL with 1,801 scrimmage yards and tied for league lead with 20 total touchdowns, McCaffrey can become only the fifth player ever with 15 rushing touchdowns and five receiving scores in the same season.
Should he find the endzone on the ground and through the air, he'll claim the outright record for the most such games in NFL history (16).
McCaffrey and Purdy have each found success easy to come by most weeks in 2023. It may not be so simple against a Ravens defense that has the talent and the scheme to make it a more even matchup than the Cowboys and Eagles managed.
Maintaining the vision
Following the win over the Cardinals, head coach Kyle Shanahan had very specific praise for Purdy.
"He can see the whole field and there is nothing that he can’t do," Shanahan said in his post-game press conference.
"He has a poise out there, you can see it. He can react. When he doesn’t have the time for stuff, he reacts and finds a way to check down and try not to take a sack or he creates and gets someone off-schedule.
"He’s had a great command over offense just running it, but also the amount of plays he’s made throughout these two years has been as many plays of any quarterback I have ever been around with how much he does."
Asked to elaborate on his thoughts on Purdy's field vision on Monday, Shanahan said:
"I think it’s a God-given trait that develops. I think you’re on a certain spectrum. The more times you get put in those situations, the more reps you can get, your preparation to what to anticipate in those situations, everything can make that a talent that you were kind of born with that you can extremely excel in or that you don’t really develop. I don’t think if you don’t have it, it’s not something that you can just develop. You have to have a certain amount of that and some are higher than others and some I think can make it better the more football they play and the more situations they get in. But, you definitely have to have a certain amount to be able to see the field like that."
But the Ravens' defense is one well-equipped to minimize the impact of that trait and muddy things up for Purdy.
Mike McDonald's unit is ranked second in the NFL by DVOA and excels at changing the picture post-snap, the Ravens aided in that regard by boasting an extremely smart and athletic safety in Kyle Hamilton who has a huge role in their ability to disguise coverages. Linebackers Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen's multiplicity in being able to rush the passer and expeditiously drop into coverage enables the Ravens to mix up their fronts and present opposing quarterbacks with an array of different looks.
Summing up the challenge Purdy will face, Shanahan said of the Ravens defense: "You look at, the numbers are usually the first thing you see and you see how great their numbers are.
"Then you turn on the tape and it looks just like their numbers. They’re really good against the run, really good against the pass, extremely sound coverages. They know how to get after it with pressures. They know how to get after it with front four. So, a really good defense.”
Nailing the finer details
Purdy and McCaffrey are not the only MVP contenders on show on Christmas Day, with Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson the meat in a 49ers sandwich as the second favorite for an award he won in 2019.
Jackson does not have the numbers of Purdy. He has completed 66.3 percent of his passes for 3,105 yards, 17 touchdowns and seven interceptions. As a rusher, he has added 741 yards and five touchdowns.
While Jackson may not have reached the heights of four years ago for much of the campaign, in recent weeks his ability to make plays out of structure but also devastate defenses with what he can do from in the pocket has played a crucial role in the Ravens being elevated to the top of the AFC.
The 49ers have done an impressive job of containing dual-threat quarterbacks in recent encounters with Jalen Hurts and Kyler Murray, but they know only too well that the combination of traits Jackson possesses make him an extremely difficult proposition even for a defense that has been the best in the NFL since the bye.
Linebacker Fred Warner told reporters this week: "When he is running, yeah, he can hurt you with his legs, but he can also hurt you by running [and] then look down the field and throw an explosive pass on you, that sort of thing. And him being more aware of wanting to stay in the pocket and deliver the football to the receivers, playmakers.
"So you can’t just sit there and say, ‘Hey, just hold him in the pocket. Don’t let him get loose.’ You hold him in the pocket, and you don’t apply pressure, then he’s going to hit you deep. So that’s where it’s like, we got to be on top of every little detail this week."
The 49ers have been on top of their details for the vast majority of a sparkling season, and their success in excelling in the finer points of the game during their most significant test of the campaign will go a long way to deciding whether they get to have a week off to start the postseason and which player is standing on stage with the MVP award Super Bowl week.
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