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The Eagles Present the 49ers Their First Real Test

If the 49ers beat the Eagles, then we definitely can look at the 49ers as legitimate Super Bowl contenders.
Grant Cohn|
The Eagles Present the 49ers Their First Real Test
The Eagles Present the 49ers Their First Real Test

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers have played 11 games, and yet their first real test will come next weekend when they'll face the Eagles.

The 49ers faced the Cowboys earlier this season and blew them out, but we already know the 49ers own them. If they face each other in the playoffs, the 49ers almost certainly will win. So Dallas isn't a real test.

The 49ers also beat a few AFC teams they probably won't face again this season, plus some NFC teams who are mediocre at best. And then the 49ers lost those three games that they easily could have won if they were healthy and focused. It's not like the Browns, Vikings and Bengals are that great. The 49ers played down to them and lost.

Next week, the 49ers will face the Eagles, who just beat the Chiefs, the defending Super Bowl Champions. If the 49ers beat the Eagles, then we definitely can look at the 49ers as legitimate Super Bowl contenders. But if the 49ers lose to the Eagles, then we'll look at the 49ers as a suspect team that would have lost 4 of its past 7 games. So much rides on this NFC Championship rematch.

Finally, we'll learn if the 49ers offensive line really has improved. Because the last time it faced the Eagles defensive line, two 49ers quarterbacks got knocked out of the game. And the 49ers offensive line hasn't changed much since then.

We'll also learn if the 49ers run defense has improved, because it struggled earlier this season and during the NFC Championship against the Eagles.

The Eagles might be the biggest test in the NFL right now. What an opportunity for the 49ers to prove themselves.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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