🏈 The Touchdown Collective - Built for January? Part VI: San Francisco 49ers
Keeping you ahead of the game, one play at a time
How the NFL really works when the lights get cold
As part of my off-season schedule for The Touchdown Collective I’ve created ‘Built for January?’ – a 10‑part look at teams across the NFL and asking whether they have what it takes for play-off football.
In today’s Touchdown Collective, I take a look at the San Francisco 49ers and beating the ghosts of the past.
So, with all that being said, let’s dive in…
No team looks more like a January team on paper. But it feels like no team has been more tortured by the month in recent years.
The 49ers have everything: physicality, scheme, versatility, balance, discipline. They can win with the run, the pass, their defense, or their sideline. Their roster is a collection of players who fit perfectly into a system that maximises their strengths.
Their coaching is elite.
Their identity is clear.
On paper, no team looks more like a January team.
But January has become their psychological opponent. The closer they get to the summit, the more the ground shakes. They’ve lost games they controlled. They’ve watched leads evaporate. They’ve seen seasons slip through their fingers in moments that felt predetermined.
Their structure is flawless. Their history is not. And history has a way of creeping into the huddle.
Last season they were massively impacted by injuries across the board and sitting in the NFC West with the Seahawks and the Rams is no place to be when you are not at 100%.
It was a mauling at the hands of the Super Bowl-winning Seahawks which ended their play-off run last season but the steps they have taken to address the offense with Mike Evans and Christian Kirk will free up Christian McCaffrey to be even more explosive this time around, as head coach Kyle Shanahan recently pointed out.
"I know that I don't want Christian to have to take all of that,” Shanahan said after McCaffrey finished first in the league in touches last season with 413. “It was amazing that he did and was able to do that.
“The reason it's so hard to get Christian out is because of how much he affects everything in the pass game, even when he's not getting the ball... But in order for us to be the running team we want to be, in order to have Christian be as good as he can be throughout the whole year, we've got to get someone to help him.”
The post-season tests more than talent. It tests memory. It tests belief. It tests whether a team can overcome not just the opponent in front of them but the ghosts behind them.
The 49ers are built for January - physically, tactically, philosophically. The question is whether they’re built for the weight of their own past, for the moments when the game becomes less about execution and more about exorcism.
San Francisco are built for January. The question is whether they’re built for their own ghosts.
📩 Who am I? I’m Michael Ham, the Daily Star Sunday and Sunday Express Sports Editor – and an avid NFL fan. I have almost 20 years of experience in sports news journalism and I’m the writer behind The Touchdown Collective.
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