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The Most Difficult Opponents on the 49ers Schedule
The 49ers schedule comes out next week. In no particular order, here are the five most difficult opponents they'll face.
The Detroit Lions
The 49ers barely beat the Lions in the NFC Championship Game. It took a miracle ricochet 50-yard pass off a defensive back's facemask and into Brandon Aiyuk's arms for the 49ers to pull it out. And while the 49ers made their mission not to get worse this offseason, the Lions got better with the additions of Marcus Davenport, D.J. Reader and Terrion Arnold. The winner of this game could be the no. 1 seed in the NFC.
The Buffalo Bills
The 49ers have faced Josh Allen only once -- back in 2020 -- and he shredded them for 320 yards and four touchdown passes. The 49ers always have a tough time containing mobile quarterbacks -- see this past Christmas when they handed the MVP award to Lamar Jackson. So Allen should be an extremely tough task for them. And this game will be on the road and potentially in the snow.
The Green Bay Packers
Another road game that could be very cold. The Packers ran the ball at will against the 49ers in the playoffs, and that was with Aaron Jones. Now they have Josh Jacobs, who's better than Jones. And if it's raining or snowing, Brock Purdy could be in trouble.
The Los Angeles Rams
The 49ers haven't beaten the Rams when Matthew Stafford, Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua are all on the field. That trio is as good as any quarterback-wide-receiver trio in the NFL.
The Kansas City Chiefs
Kyle Shanahan has never beaten Patrick Mahomes. The Chiefs are the one team in the NFL that simply has the 49ers' number even when the 49ers are the better team on paper as they were in the Super Bowl. Another loss to the Chiefs would be deflating.
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.