From bad to Super Bowl contenders: 4 key decisions that turned the 49ers’ season around

Let’s consider the state of the San Francisco 49ers all the way back on Nov. 8. It was the Monday after the team got shellacked by the division-leading Arizona Cardinals, 31-17, behind backup quarterback Colt McCoy.

That game has been a popular discussion point because of how bad things appeared. It was the fifth loss in six weeks. It negated the positive vibes from the previous Sunday, when the team snapped a four-game losing streak with a road win over the Chicago Bears.

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The loss to Arizona gave the Cardinals a season sweep of San Francisco and dropped the 49ers’ record to 3-5. Coach Kyle Shanahan’s team seemed like it was on the brink of collapse, with the decision to keep quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, even after moving heaven and earth to draft Trey Lance, looking like a season-defining mistake.

Fast forward to late January. The 49ers are one win away from the Super Bowl after road playoff wins over the Cowboys and Packers. The idea San Francisco would get to this point was laughable based on how things went Nov. 7 against the Cardinals.

They’ll take on the Los Angeles Rams in Southern California on Sunday, a team they’ve beaten six consecutive times, including a season-altering blowout Nov. 15, 31-10.

It took a calm, big-picture view for Shanahan and his coaching staff to stay the course and get back to a team capable of reaching its championship expectations. The turnaround also took some key decisions to change that trajectory. Let’s go through four of them.

Deebo Samuel, running back

Receiver Deebo Samuel had 49 catches for 882 yards during the first eight games of the season. He accounted for 30% of the team’s receptions and 42% of its yards in the passing game. Despite that, Shanahan decided to zag and make Samuel a focal point of the running game.

In the Week 10 win over the Rams, Samuel had five runs for 36 yards (a 7.2 average) with five catches for 97 yards and a receiving touchdown. He went on to average nearly eight carries per game from that point, including the two playoff contests. He scored all but one of his NFL-record eight rushing touchdowns for a wideout in that stretch. He also had the game-winning touchdown run in Dallas in the wild-card round.

The 49ers have always liked Samuel with the ball in his hands. Shanahan dabbled with him as a runner earlier in his career, but never leaned on him to the extent he does now.

“(With) Deebo, you didn’t totally know,” Shanahan said after the Rams game about using him at running back. “But you got to see him run screens and how he physically was. It was how he finished screens that we liked so much. He really brought it to people when there was nowhere to go and just having him, you see what he’s good at and you try to put players in position to help them.”

Samuel has become one of the unique weapons in recent memory. He got a crucial first down on the ground in Green Bay on a third-and-7, ensuring the 49ers would prevent Aaron Rodgers from getting the ball with a chance to score. It led to Robbie Gould kicking the game-winner as time expired.

Samuel in six games against the Rams has 544 yards from scrimmage and five total touchdowns. There’s little doubt he’ll be the 49ers’ most important player when the two teams square off Sunday with a Super Bowl trip on the line.

Emphasizing run defense

One of the reasons San Francisco suffered that loss to Arizona was the inability to stop the run. The defense allowed 163 yards on the ground, 13 fewer than the worst mark of the season the previous week in Chicago.

Something had to change, because the 49ers wouldn’t be able to get stops if they continued getting gashed by the run.

“It’s pretty embarrassing, and it’s unacceptable, for sure,” linebacker Fred Warner said afterward. “Just too much leaky yardage. We got to find ways to knock back. When we make contact, they are drawing runs and dribbling for two or three extra yards and that can’t happen. Missed tackles, obviously, are going to kill us as well.”

The 49ers the next three games allowed 52, 54 and 67 rushing yards. Not coincidentally, they won all three games over the Rams, Jaguars and Vikings. The following week they allowed 146 in a loss to the Seattle Seahawks, with exactly half coming on the 73-yard touchdown run off a fake punt in the first quarter.

That was the only game San Francisco allowed more than 100 yards over the final 11 games, including the playoffs. The 49ers finished with the seventh-ranked rushing defense despite playing the “Wide 9” front, which sets defensive ends up well outside the tackles exposing running lanes inside.

“One thing that happens when things aren’t going well, everyone tries to panic and you try to find this reason, that reason,” defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans said Nov. 12. “Everybody just has to hit reset and just get back to doing the basic things the right way.”

The 49ers have made up for it by getting strong play from linebackers Warner, Azeez Al-Shaair and Dre Greenlaw, who returned from an early-season groin injury. Warner admitted to not having a strong start to the season, but he had his best game of the year in Green Bay, earning a stellar 94.2 overall grade from Pro Football Focus while forcing a momentum-changing fumble of tight end Marcedes Lewis in the first quarter.

Moving Arik Armstead inside

Things seemed bleak for the 49ers’ defensive line when they lost 2020 first-round pick Javon Kinlaw and Pro Bowl pass rusher Dee Ford midway through the season. But the defensive line is surging in the playoffs, with San Francisco boasting arguably the best pass rush of the four teams still alive.

Much of that, of course, can attributed to Nick Bosa, one of the best pass rushers and defensive linemen in the entire NFL. Another big development was moving Arik Armstead inside on a more permanent basis after he spent a bulk of his snaps playing defensive end.

Armstead moved inside predominantly in Week 5, after Kinlaw was put on season-ending injured reserve to have knee surgery. He had one sack during the first eight games. He has seven sacks since, including six over the last four games (including two postseason contests), with five coming on third down.

Bosa, meanwhile, had 15½ sacks in the regular season with a half sack in Dallas and two in Green Bay. Much of his production recently has come playing next to Armstead, where the two have replicated what Bosa had playing alongside All-Pro DeForest Buckner when the team had the best defensive line in the NFL during the Super Bowl run in 2019.

Sticking with Garoppolo

Is Jimmy Garoppolo elite? Certainly not. Are his games roller-coaster rides because he has a tendency to throw maddening interceptions (and other passes that get dropped or misplayed by defenders)? Absolutely. Does he have a tendency to miss wide-open receivers on deep plays? You betcha.

But one thing is unequivocal about Garoppolo for the 49ers this season. He has been part of the solution for fixing things when it could have gone the other way had he been benched for Lance.

A key characteristic of this 49ers team throughout this playoff run has been resiliency. And perhaps no one on the roster has been more resilient than Garoppolo. After all, the team invested three first-round picks in his eventual replacement, yet he stuck around like a (handsome) cockroach and was a model citizen throughout.

He’s played well in key moments, like the game-tying drive when the season was on the brink in Week 18. The 49ers were down a touchdown with 1:27 left and no timeouts. He led a five-play, 83-yard scoring drive to tie it before winning in overtime.

Saturday in Green Bay, despite playing poorly while the offense struggled throughout, Garoppolo hit Samuel and tight end George Kittle on short throws to set up the game-winning field goal, overcoming a first half in which he completed 3 of 9 throws for 43 yards while Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk and Jauan Jennings had key drops and the offensive line was getting dominated by the Packers’ defensive front.

Shanahan had every opportunity to bench Garoppolo in favor of Lance throughout the season. But he stuck with the veteran despite the 3-5 start, the maddening plays and the thumb injury Dec. 23. To this point, it’s paid off, and what a story it would be if Garoppolo helped the 49ers reach the Super Bowl after the team told the world he needed replacing.