What do you need to win a Super Bowl? A bit of everything. Or most things. A lot of very specific things. There’s no exact way to build this profile, though, not if you’re looking at the last five, 10 or 15 teams that ended the season covered in confetti and posing with the Lombardi Trophy.
The Rams won it last season as the No. 4 seed, starting on a Monday night in the wild-card round and after a very well-balanced but hardly dominant regular-season performance. The Buccaneers won it two seasons ago as a 5 seed with an all-time great quarterback and a very good defense but in the regular season hardly ran the ball at all. The Chiefs won it three seasons ago (beating the 49ers in the Super Bowl) as a 2 seed with a great QB and a pretty tepid defense.
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It’s not random, but it absolutely has random elements. It depends on the matchups, the injury situation, the weather and maybe 300 other things. The best (and luckiest) teams are able to minimize the riskier elements and then hope they have all other factors covered.
What does this mean for the 49ers’ chances this postseason, starting with a wild-card game Saturday at Levi’s Stadium against Seattle?
As an exercise, I ran some 49ers numbers and qualifications through a bunch of statistical categories and Super Bowl-candidate checklists. The general conclusion is not a surprising one: The 49ers have a very strong Super Bowl profile because their regular season covers a lot of bases — No. 1 defense, efficient offense, No. 1 in turnover differential, the No. 2 seed guarantees at least two home games if they win their first one.
Important point: When you measure a current team against recent Super Bowl history, it has to be considered in the context of specific seasons, specific games and specific players. You don’t need to have the greatest defense of all time, you need to have the defense that plays the best relative to the moment when great defense is most necessary. You don’t need to have the best or most experienced quarterback in the league, you need a QB who can make the big play exactly when you need it … in relation to all the other playoff QBs that year in all the other crisis moments.
Which, of course, brings us to the 49ers’ most interesting variable: Brock Purdy and the historical gospel that no rookie quarterback has won or even started any of the previous 56 Super Bowls. Let’s begin with that one, go through a bunch of other categories, and see what we get:
Purdy winning a Super Bowl would be unprecedented but, given the field of QB competition and the 49ers’ strengths across the board, not that crazy to imagine.
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I frankly would be more surprised to see Daniel Jones, Geno Smith or even Tom Brady (given the circumstances and relative rosters) get to the Super Bowl than I would to see Purdy in Glendale, Ariz., in February. It’s not that he’s better than every rookie QB ever, it’s that he’s probably in the best circumstances a rookie QB has ever had — and oh yes, he’s flourishing, which helps the cause, too.
Purdy doesn’t have to go from seventh-round pick to Hall of Fame QB right now to give the 49ers a great shot at the Super Bowl; once and if they’re there and potentially facing Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen or Joe Burrow, that dynamic changes, but the 49ers can deal with that then. To maximize the 49ers’ chances, Purdy just has to distribute the ball as he’s done the past six games and, maybe even more importantly, avoid turnovers just the way he has in this six-game/five-start, 13 TD passes/3 interceptions stint.
The 49ers have committed only 17 turnovers, third-fewest in the league. That wasn’t only about Purdy, of course, but he inherited the smooth offensive engine that was running well with Jimmy Garoppolo and revved it even higher.
In some ways, this feels reminiscent of the way Kyle Shanahan and Garoppolo clicked during Garoppolo’s 5-0 run to close the 2017 season. That was not a good 49ers team (which ended up at 6-10), but that was a team not many opponents would’ve loved to see in the playoffs. And the current team has many more significant pieces — Christian McCaffrey, Nick Bosa, Deebo Samuel, Trent Williams, Fred Warner, Charvarius Ward and more — and Purdy is playing at a higher statistical level.
From the Dec. 4 moment he subbed in for an injured Garoppolo to last weekend, Purdy put up the NFL’s best passer rating, at 112.0, thanks to his 68.3 completion percentage, 218-yard average, 8.12 yards per attempt and 13 TDs in that six-game period.
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Detroit’s Jared Goff was second during that period at 108.9, Mahomes was third at 104.9 and Washington’s Taylor Heinicke was fourth at 102.9, so take this as you will. But the more you see Purdy play, the more you hear him describe what he’s seeing and the more you see his mind meld with Shanahan, why couldn’t Purdy be as good or better than what Baltimore got from Trent Dilfer in Super Bowl 35 or Philadelphia got from Nick Foles in Super Bowl 52?
This was Purdy talking about his second TD pass to George Kittle on Sunday, which took some time to develop. On a goal-line play, having this kind of poise and high-speed mental processing is … not normal.
“I think (linebacker) Isaiah Simmons did a pretty good job being pretty tight on George early on,” Purdy said. “I was, you know, ‘I think George can break out of this with a quick burst and create some separation.’ So I just trusted in him. I was a little hesitant at first, ‘Should I move on?’ But I was like, ‘No, George is good in one-on-one matchups like this.’ It was good, I just put the ball out front and George made a play.”
The Purdy-Kittle connection is unrealpic.twitter.com/PTfkK2Z2wM
— 49ers on NBCS (@NBCS49ers) January 8, 2023
An updated stat: The 49ers are 38-17 in Garoppolo regular-season starts this era. They were 9-29 in the combined starts of Nick Mullens, C.J. Beathard, Brian Hoyer and Trey Lance. They are now 5-0 in Purdy starts.
Maybe this is exactly how the first rookie QB was going to get to a Super Bowl — an overlooked, mature prospect who providentially lands on a great team with a system that’s perfect for him and finds his way to the starting spot midway through the season by random injury fate.
My closest comparable to Purdy’s situation: Russell Wilson’s first few years with the Seahawks, when he came in as an unheralded, unimposing third-round pick in 2012, beat out Matt Flynn in his rookie camp, combined with Seattle’s ferocious defense to land a playoff berth that season and then helped lead them to a Super Bowl victory after the 2013 season.
Wilson, listed at 5-foot-11, played 50 college games at North Carolina State and Wisconsin, probably had a shot to win a Super Bowl as a rookie. Purdy, listed at 6-1, played 48 games at Iowa State, absolutely has a shot this season. And now Purdy’s first playoff game is also the first Seahawks playoff game since they traded Wilson away. QB karma.
One of the most recurring statistical markers for Super Bowl teams is landing in the top 10 in offensive yards per play during the regular season. The 49ers were fourth this season, at 5.9 yards per play.
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You’ve got to be able to move the ball, whether it’s with a franchise QB, a great running game, a fantastic system or preferably all of the above. The last 12 Super Bowl participants have finished the regular season top 10 in yards per play, with an average ranking of just above sixth.
This season, the 49ers only trailed Kansas City (6.4), Miami (6.1) and Buffalo (6.1). The other top-10 teams among the playoff field: Philadelphia (5.9), Seattle (5.7) and Jacksonville (5.7).
Notably, if we’re narrowing the conference field, here are the NFC playoff teams that did not make the top-10 list in this category: Minnesota 13th (5.5), Dallas 15th (5.3), the Giants 22nd (5.2) and Tampa Bay 25th (5.1).
GO DEEPER
Kawakami: The 49ers will go as far as Brock Purdy can take them
The 49ers’ status as the league’s No. 1 defense in regular-season yards allowed doesn’t have a big correlation to playoff success, but it’s a baseline factor.
A top defense eases the pressure on other facets. A top defense gets you to a certain point that a lousy defense just can’t. A top defense can slow down the opponent just enough to let its own offensive playmakers go win the game. And the 49ers definitely have a great defense — they also were fourth in yards per play allowed (5.0), tied with Pittsburgh for most interceptions (20), second behind only Tennessee’s 76.9 in rush yards allowed per game (77.7) and first in fewest points allowed per game (16.3).
But … the last time the No. 1 defense in yards made it to the Super Bowl was when the 2015 Broncos crushed the Panthers in the big game. Basically, having the best defense in the league guarantees you nothing in the postseason, but it’s a huge reason you got there and it can bail you out in a playoff game or two.
You still need the offense to put up points to win it all, though.
The 49ers are the hottest team in the league going into the playoffs after winning their last 10 regular-season games in a row, but there’s been no correlation between end-of-season winning streaks and postseason success.
This is another way that teams get into the playoffs (which is important!), but it’s not so much an indicator that they will do great in the playoffs.
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Over the previous 10 seasons, 12 teams have gone into the playoffs on winning streaks of six games or longer. Only two of those teams, the 2016 Patriots (who ended the regular season on a seven-game streak) and 2019 Chiefs (six games) went on to win the Super Bowl. And only one other (the 2014 Seahawks, who closed with six wins) made it as far as the Super Bowl.
In fact, the previous three teams that carried winning streaks of 10 games or more into the playoffs all lost in the early rounds. Baltimore had a 12-game streak to close the 2019 regular season and then lost in the divisional round. Kansas City had a 10-game streak to close the 2015 regular season and lost in the divisional round. And Denver had an 11-game streak to close the 2012 regular season and also lost in the divisional round.
But playing well is its own reward and its own marker. The 49ers were plus-161 in point differential during this winning streak. That builds confidence, sets up seeding and gets the attention of the league.
The 49ers won their way to the NFC’s 2 seed, which is a solid spot for Super Bowl hunting.
In the previous nine seasons, the Super Bowl has been won by either a 1 or 2 seed seven times. Two seeds have won twice over that span — the 2018 Patriots and the 2019 Chiefs (over the 1-seed 49ers). Two seeds have made it to the Super Bowl four times total over that span.
Wrapped up in that is that 2 seeds get multiple home games if they win their first one, and that’s a benefit, especially for the 49ers, who had an 8-1 regular-season record at Levi’s Stadium, tied with the Vikings for the best home mark in the league. (AFC teams only had eight regular-season home games this season; Kansas City and the Bills were 7-1 and Cincinnati was 6-1 with a no contest).
The 49ers led the NFL with a plus-173 point differential during the regular season, which is definitely better than the opposite.
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This, surprisingly, doesn’t have much correlation with getting to or winning the Super Bowl. In the previous five seasons, teams with the best point differential only reached the Super Bowl twice, and that was in the same season, when the 2017 Eagles and Patriots tied atop the category at plus-162 and the Eagles beat the Patriots in that Super Bowl.
The other top point-differential teams lost in the divisional round (2019 Baltimore, 2020 Baltimore and 2021 Buffalo) and in the conference championship game (2018 New Orleans).
But general success in this category is an indicator: There hasn’t been a Super Bowl champion ranked lower than sixth in regular-season differential in the past five seasons. Last season, the Rams ranked sixth. Two seasons ago, the Buccaneers won the Super Bowl after ranking fourth in point differential, before that it was Kansas City ranking fourth, the Patriots ranking fifth and the Eagles in the previously mentioned tie for first.
When the 49ers made it to Super Bowl 54 and lost to Kansas City, the 49ers ranked third in this category.
The 49ers’ 4-2 postseason record under Shanahan is worth something. It’s hard to say what, but it has to be something.
Maybe this is just because I watched Bill Belichick’s Patriots and Bill Walsh’s 49ers for too long, and there are clear and obvious exceptions, but it really does seem that certain coaches have a knack for winning games in the playoffs. Of course, that also means they’re going to be in some huge games and maybe lose some of those huge games, which Shanahan certainly has done. Belichick, too, by the way.
But also: Shanahan has won exactly two games in both his 49ers’ postseason campaigns. He hasn’t gotten there in three of his six 49ers seasons, but when he does, he usually comes in heavy.
Of the coaches in this year’s tournament, Cincinnati’s Zac Taylor actually has the highest postseason winning percentage because he went 3-1 last season in his only trip, putting him at .750. After him, Jacksonville’s Doug Pederson and Shanahan are tied at 4-2 (.667). Right behind them are Baltimore’s John Harbaugh (11-8, .579), Kansas City’s Andy Reid (19-16, .543), Dallas’ Mike McCarthy (10-9, .526) and Seattle’s Pete Carroll (11-10, .524) and Buffalo’s Sean McDermott (3-4, .429). Philadelphia’s Nick Sirianni lost his first playoff game last season. (Belichick, not in the playoffs, has a .705 winning percentage at 31-13).
This is the first playoff campaign for Tampa Bay’s Todd Bowles, Miami’s Mike McDaniel, the Giants’ Brian Daboll, the Chargers’ Brandon Staley and the Vikings’ Kevin O’Connell.
GO DEEPER
Healthier and deeper than last year, 49ers set up nicely for a postseason run
(Photo of Brock Purdy: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
