49ers are the team nobody wants to mess with in the NFC playoffs

The San Francisco 49ers were the hottest team in the league over the second half of the season, and nobody is looking forward to facing them in the playoffs this year. 

After a 3-4 start to the 2022 season, there were plenty of fans and analysts already writing off the San Francisco 49ers. Under the direction of head coach Kyle Shanahan since 2017, this team has seen both good and bad seasons; there really hasn’t been an in-between.

Shanahan took over a 2-14 football team, and over the next four seasons, his squad would surpass 6 wins just once. Some believed that the 2022 49ers were going to be an average NFL team this year, but nothing could be further from the truth.

This is a team that should have every other playoff squad shivering in their boots. Here are three reasons why nobody wants to mess with the 49ers this post-season.

49ers are the hottest team in the NFL

Since their underwhelming start, San Francisco has closed out the regular season by winning 10 straight games and finishing with a 13-4 record. Sadly, this still wasn’t good enough to earn the lone first-round bye in the NFC — that belongs to the 14-3 Eagles.

While the Eagles technically finished as the top seed in the NFC, it’s hard to argue that the 49ers aren’t the hottest team in the NFL since Week 8. Though San Francisco didn’t exactly have the most difficult schedule in the league, they more than took care of business against pedestrian competition. During this span, the 49ers have outscored their opponents on an average by 16.1 points per game with an average final score of 30.5-14.4, per ESPN stats.

This team is blazing hot right now and just capped off the season with a 38-13 win over the Arizona Cardinals. The NFL is all about getting hot at the right time, and nobody is going to want to mess with this squad that has been on fire since the second half of the season.