Barber: 49ers are Super Bowl contenders, not pretenders

SANTA CLARA - Two teams remain unbeaten after six weeks of NFL action, and one of them is none other than your San Francisco 49ers, hot off a 4-12 record in 2018 and a generous preseason over/under line of 8 wins for the 2019 season, according to most Las Vegas books.

As we come to terms with this stunning metamorphosis, I propose a question: Why not the 49ers?

Someone is going to represent the NFC in Super Bowl 54. Why shouldn't that team be the 49ers?

“I want them to know that they can win every game that they go into, no matter who's in front of them. I think our team does believe that,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said Monday, about 24 hours after his players completed a defining 20-7 win over the Los Angeles Rams. “We have the people, we can put the schemes together, we have the talent to do it and we have the people who work at it that no matter what type of game we're in, we do really believe that we can win any game. That's where it starts with a good team. … The more you can win, the stronger it gets.”

I am not prepared to call the Niners the best team in the NFL, because the New England Patriots still exist. The Patriots are 6-0. They have scored 198 points and given up 48. Their head coach is an evil druid wizard and their quarterback is a cyborg, and they have played in half of the past 18 Super Bowls.

The race right now is for second place, which is still pretty impressive when you consider there are 32 NFL teams. And I'm here to tell you that the 49ers' 5-0 record is not a mirage or a series of lucky events or the natural outcome of a soft schedule. San Francisco is as good as any team outside of Massachusetts, and you should not feel ashamed to utter the phrase “Super Bowl” in public.

Yes, the 49ers have flaws. They lack a No. 1 wide receiver, their quarterback is prone to occasional bouts of poor decision-making and their once-automatic kicker is barely semi-automatic. They've got some significant injuries, too.

But name an NFC contender that couldn't use a little squirt of wart remover.

The New Orleans Saints are pretty good, one of the few NFL teams with a backup quarterback (Teddy Bridgewater) good enough to keep the ship afloat during an injury to the starter (Drew Brees). On the other hand, the Saints have been just OK behind Bridgewater. They're 5-1, but they haven't beaten anyone by more than a touchdown this season. The Saints are taking care of business, not giving anyone the business.

How about the Green Bay Packers? Could this be the first time in nearly a decade they have enough pieces around Aaron Rodgers to make a Super Bowl run? I mean, maybe. But Rodgers hasn't been killing it this season. His passer rating before Monday's game, 93.4, was considered pretty good when he was a rookie behind Brett Favre. Now it would rank 29th in the league. The Packers struggled against the Lions on Monday night.

I like the Minnesota Vikings. They have a legit defense, and Dalvin Cook is a heck of a running back. They just had a nice 38-20 win against the Eagles. But quarterback Kirk Cousins can never decide if he's magnificent or awful. He's 31 now and has never won a playoff game. This is the man to whom you would entrust your season?

Then there are the 5-1 Seattle Seahawks, following the 49ers like a creepy van in a horror movie. Russell Wilson is a brilliant quarterback, possibly the most underrated player of his generation. The defense hasn't completely fallen apart since the breakup of the Legion of Boom, but it isn't immovable anymore, either. Four of Seattle's wins have come by a total of eight points. When a veteran team is winning on guile and pride, you wonder how sustainable the formula is.

The truth is that the 49ers have been better than any of these potential rivals in 2019, at least so far.

I have seen NFL teams soar to a glorious run of momentum, winning so many close games they begin to think their title run is preordained. The 2016 Raiders were a little like that, the defense making just enough game-saving plays to mask its overall weakness.

The 49ers are no such phenomenon. Shanahan's team has been superb in 2019, and more so each successive week. Since a sloppy Week 1 win at Tampa Bay, when the defense was still finding its identity and quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was testing out his reconstructed knee, the 49ers have averaged 446 yards a game; their opponents have averaged 223. Exactly half.

Yardage figures can be misleading. But it's not like the 49ers have padded their stats by throwing the ball around while on the wrong end of a one-sided score, because they haven't trailed by more than seven points all season. They've been dominating the line of scrimmage, dominating the flow of the game.

A lot can change during a football season. The 49ers don't have the pedigree to convince anyone they have locked into a long-term trend here. On the other hand, they look built to persevere. They can run the ball, their quarterback is good enough to win with talent around him and their defensive front seven is a nightmare for opponents. Those are qualities that can survive past the regular season.

Let me toss out one group of representative stats. Critics scoff at the quarterbacks the 49ers have faced - Tampa Bay's Jameis Winston, Cincinnati's Andy Dalton, Pittsburgh's Mason Rudolph, Cleveland's Baker Mayfield and the Rams' Jared Goff. And yes, that's a mediocre whole. But those QBs have an 84.7 rating against the rest of the league, and 62.2 against San Francisco. They have a completion percentage of 62.2 against the rest of the league, 53.6 vs. the 49ers. They have averaged 279.6 passing yards per game against the rest of the league, just 171.4 against the 49ers.

The Niners aren't just beating opposing quarterbacks. They're embarrassing them.

And if the 49ers are destined to return to the mean in some areas, keep in mind that within the next month or so, they are likely to see both starting offensive tackles, the starting fullback and one starting cornerback return to the fold. And maybe a slot receiver to follow. They could easily regress over the remainder of the 2019 season. They could also get better.

As Shanahan said, “Our guys believe that they can win, we've done that so far, but by no means do we feel we've arrived. I mean, there's lots of things we can do better, and we know teams are going to get better as we keep going. The main thing is that we do, too.”

It would be crazy to point to a recent 4-12 team and guarantee a Super Bowl. But it would be just as irrational to discount this one. The 49ers aren't just a happy turnaround story at this point. They are legitimate contenders to play in February, and it's time to say that out loud.

You can reach columnist Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. Follow him on Twitter: @Skinny_Post.