Austin Gayle

They have as banged up as an injury report, if not more so than the Buffalo Bills.

And I think...

watching back that Philadelphia Eagles game last week with the Niners, it was very clear that they threw out all the stops to try and win this game.

The Jawan Jennings touchdown to Christian McCaffrey, like a lot of this stuff I felt like against a very good Eagles defense was stuff that it's going to be hard to recreate again against arguably an as good defense with the Seattle Seahawks.

And we saw this game, what, two, three weeks ago, whenever it was in week 18.

And even though that game was a little bit close for a while, it really did feel like the Seahawks offensively and defensively shut down the San Francisco 49ers, kind of suffocated them in that game.

For Seattle, if you had to write out what's the biggest weakness of the Seattle team, I think the easy answer, and probably everyone's answer is like, oh, Sam Darnold, you never know.

In these big spots, does he throw picks?

Does he go into bozo mode?

When you watch back that Niners game, that Niners-Seattle game from a few weeks ago, Week 18, they were able to run the ball so successfully with Kenneth Walker and Zach Charbonnet that they never really asked Sam Darnold to kind of put the game on his back.

And I think this is going to be another case of that where Mike McDonald doesn't want Sam Darnold to have to go win the game.

He doesn't.

I don't think any coach coaching Sam Darnold really wants to put him in that position.

They want to run the ball successfully, which they should be able to do against a very banged-up Niners defense.

And they want to put Sam Darnold throwing the ball to JSN when he's wide open or running off play action.

I think this is...

where if you are a Niners fan, you're praying for a Sam Darnold disaster, a 2-3-4 turnover game that gives you a chance.

I've got another flip-flop here because I remember last week on this pod, I was doubting the Patriots.

I said, maybe next year.

And after that, and I said this on the pod, if they beat the Chargers, I think a lot of people will really quickly say, oh my God, the offensive line is terrible.