With a win at home against the Seahawks on Saturday night, the 49ers would have finished the season as the NFC\u2019s No. 1 seed. Now, they\u2019ll be No. 5 if the Rams lose to the Cardinals \u2014 and No. 6 if the Rams win.<\/p>\n
Either way, the 49ers have a much tougher path to the Super Bowl they\u2019ll host than if they\u2019d secured the bye and home-field advantage throughout the postseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re ready for it,\u201d coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters after the 13-3 loss to Seattle. \u201cI mean, yeah, it would have been nice to have two to have a home game here \u2014 or both home games \u2014 and get a bye, but it is what it is. I mean, this team\u2019s been through a lot this year. Now we got to do it the hard way, and we\u2019ll embrace the shit out of doing it the hard way and look forward to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the 49ers finish at No. 5, they\u2019ll face the eventual NFC South champion (Tampa Bay or Carolina) next weekend. If the 49ers land at No. 6, they\u2019ll face the Bears in Chicago (if they win on Sunday against the Lions or the Eagles lose to the Commanders) or the Eagles in Philly (if the Eagles win and the Bears lose).<\/p>\n
Depending on how the other games go in the NFC wild-card round, a win by the 49ers in the opening phase of the playoffs could send them to Seattle for a rematch of the Week 18 game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a win at home against the Seahawks on Saturday night, the 49ers would have finished the season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387044,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-387043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-nfl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}