The 49ers are 5-0 again, and that alone is enough to make the warning lights flash a little.
They’ve already knocked off an NFC favorite, and the schedule ahead has a couple of games that look winnable before the bye week. That’s exactly the kind of setup that once turned into trouble for San Francisco in 2023, when a 5-0 start gave way to three straight losses and opened the door to questions about whether the Niners were really the class of the NFC. They did recover from that stretch and eventually grabbed the No. 1 seed, but the goal this time is obvious: don’t let the same midseason dip show up again.
The biggest key is simple. They can’t sleepwalk through the next few weeks.
Washington is up next, and while the Commanders are 1-3-1, they’re not a team to brush aside. They just tied the New York Giants in an ugly result, but Jayden Daniels remains a real threat, and Washington already handed Seattle its other loss this season. San Francisco also won’t have linebacker Dre Greenlaw, who was suspended for a game after his headbutt of Ernest Jones on Sunday.
After that comes a trip to Atlanta. The Falcons are 2-3, but they’ve looked good when Michael Penix Jr. has been on the field. There’s also no shortage of motivation on Atlanta’s side with Kyle Shanahan coming to town - the offensive coordinator from the infamous 28-3 Super Bowl collapse against the New England Patriots - and Raheem Morris back in the building too, after serving as Atlanta’s head coach last year.
Then comes the bye in Week 8, followed by a meeting with the Raiders. Las Vegas is 3-2 after opening 3-0, so that’s not a team San Francisco can casually wave off either. And Kirk Cousins will surely have something to prove against Shanahan, his former offensive coordinator in Washington.
The offense has to keep doing its part, too.
When the 49ers dropped those three games in 2023, they were held to 17 points in each one. Brock Purdy started giving the ball away, and the whole operation got sloppy.
That’s the danger zone San Francisco needs to avoid now. The good news is that Purdy looks further along as a quarterback than he did during that 2023 MVP-caliber run.
He knows Shanahan’s system inside and out at this point, and he’s taking better care of the football.
Right now, the Niners look like a team that knows exactly who it is. They’re not chasing outside chatter, and they’ve clearly learned enough from what they’ve already been through together to understand there’s no room for a soft stretch.
That doesn’t mean they’re about to roll through the season unbeaten. It does mean there’s little reason to expect them to start tossing away games they should handle.
This group has been through enough to know every week matters, and that mindset should help them keep stacking wins instead of revisiting the mess from 2023.
In Other News...
Brock Purdy Is Entering A 49ers Debate Fans Will Love
Brock Purdys steady start has the 49ers sitting in rare company, and it has also pulled his name into a familiar kind of national discussion. After another consistent stretch through the first five weeks of the season, Purdy has helped keep San Francisco undefeated, giving the offense the kind of stability that tends to change how outsiders talk about the quarterback at the center of it all.
Bill Simmons only added fuel to that conversation on a recent episode of The Ringer, offering high praise for Purdy and placing him in an unexpected lane when he talked about where the 49ers passer stacks up. With the Chiefs also unbeaten and Purdy continuing to look the part in his third season, the debate around how high his ceiling really goes is only going to get louder from here. [Read more 🡒]
49ers Receiver Injuries Just Forced A Decision They Wanted To Avoid
The 49ers receiver room has thinned fast enough that it has become a real roster question heading into Week 6 against Washington. With Deebo Samuel sidelined and the group already short on healthy bodies from the original roster, San Francisco is suddenly in a spot it wanted to avoid, one where depth matters as much as star power and every available option has to be weighed carefully.
That has naturally pushed the front office toward a familiar kind of midseason check-in: look at the market, see what is out there, and decide whether the need is urgent enough to act. Veterans such as Tyreek Hill have been mentioned among the possibilities, but the 49ers have been measured so far, suggesting they are trying to solve a receiver problem without overreacting to it. [Read more 🡒]
49ers Rookie Suddenly Has A Big Chance To Change The Linebacker Plan
Dre Greenlaws suspension has opened an unexpected lane for rookie Jaden Dugger, who now looks positioned to take on a much bigger role for the 49ers in Week 6. Dugger has already had a season of fluctuating snap counts, but he also showed what the staff is willing to ask of him when Greenlaw was previously unavailable, logging a career-high workload in that stretch.
For San Francisco, this is more than a short-term patch at WILL linebacker. It is a real chance to see whether Dugger can handle a heavier weekly burden and settle into the kind of role the defense has been searching for, especially with Greenlaw sidelined. If the rookie responds well, it could give the 49ers a new layer of flexibility at a position that may become one of the more interesting decisions on the roster down the road. [Read more 🡒]