NFL Week 16 Monday

49ERS @ COLTS - 8:15 PM

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Well you wanna talk about two teams on opposite trajectories. In the Colts defense... that's definitely a crazy stretch of schedule.

Believe it or not, San Francisco controls their destiny.

A big reason this Colts team has remained competitive is the defensive front 7. This team is not getting run on right now.

Look at their last 4 games.

Those games are without DeForest Buckner btw.. who's set to return for this one.

So are they able to keep CMC from running the ball on em?

We saw the 49ers run game come back to life for a while there. Then Ben Bartch get hurt again and it's just fallen off the last couple weeks.

The problem with the Colts is I can't trust em against the pass. The secondary is too injured and they can't generate pressure. Brock Purdy's got elite looking numbers from a clean pocket.

Now I know you look at this graphic and you'd think oh wow perfect matchup for Purdy. But these are season long numbers. Since Sauce and Ward got hurt again, the Colts have been running a ton of Cover 3.

Brock Purdy's coming into this one with confidence. Last week was by far his best game of the season. The 49ers didn't punt once in this game.

The question is on the other side of the ball... what do we think of this Colts offense right now?

The first Phil Rivers game wasn't excellent. In fact, the offense was pretty terrible. But I think we can all agree that a home game against the 49ers defense is not even close to comparable to a road game in Seattle.

Little bit worried that they lost another OT though.

And that makes it interesting... because what's the biggest weakness of this San Francisco defense? The pass rush... they can't pressure the QB. But against the Colts missing bo th OTs... and against Philip Rivers who's getting rid of the ball in 2 seconds anyway... it's almost like the lack of pass rush from San Francisco is a little bit less of a factor. 4.4 YPA last week.

Where I'm worried about San Francisco's defense is stopping Jonathan Taylor. The 49ers have had problems with the run for a while now. They haven't even played the toughest opponents either. TEN, CLE, CAR, ARI?

49ers are getting Bethune back though which is huge. Their two main tacklers this year have been Winters and Bethune. They've been playing without Bethune on the field the last 3 games.

49ers -5.5 or pass.