6 reasons why 49ers 2021 season was still awesome (it really was)
By Peter Panacy
Reason No. 5: 49ers weren’t expected to make it to NFC Championship game anyway
Again, let’s rewind. But this time, let’s go back to before Week 1 and look at some of FanSided’s 2021 predictions for the entire league.
FanSided NFL insider Matt Verderame predicted the Niners would go 10-7 on the year (spot on in that department) but suggested San Francisco would fall victim to a Wild Card-round loss, albeit to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Carrying things even further, Verderame’s cohost on FanSided’s Stacking the Box Podcast, Mark Carman, predicted the NFC West would send three teams in to the NFL playoffs.
The 49ers weren’t one of them.
It’s not hard to find other predictions that are similar in nature, perhaps the Niners getting into the postseason but not doing too much once they got there.
Instead, San Francisco ended the playoff campaigns of two of its chief longtime rivals, the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers, returning favors from the 1990s where the 49ers were frequently on the wrong side of postseason losses.
Not bad when considering the Niners were among the NFL’s final four this season. But it gets better.