Strange unwritten football rules the 49ers, rest of NFL face

49ers unwritten rule No. 3: Don’t run up the score

This might be the best equivalent to what Fernando Tatis Jr. and the Padres did to the Rangers in the context-setting introduction of this article — continuing to build up the score when it’s already pretty obvious your team is going to win the game.

There are differences between the NFL and MLB, though. In baseball, you swing at a pitch with the goal of putting it in play. It doesn’t matter if your team is up 15-2 and you’re facing a 3-1 count or trailing by five runs in the bottom of the ninth inning. In football, however, a simple run up the gut is perhaps the best way to chew up clock time and prevent the losing team from staging a comeback. If the losing team can’t stop a basic run play, well… that’s the other team’s problem.

Just like the Green Bay Packers when the Niners were running up the score late in the NFC Championship game last season, right?

San Francisco won that conference championship 31-20, but the score makes it seem closer than the game actually was.

But as we’ll see in a following slide, sometimes those budding leads wind up being necessary, as the 49ers unfortunately found out.