Will the 49ers Pluck the Cardinals?
This Sunday at Levi's Stadium, the Cardinals will be without DeAndre Hopkins, Kyler Murray, Rondale Moore, Justin Pugh, Rodney Hudson, Colt McCoy, Antoine Wesley, DJ Humphries, Zach Ertz, Rashard Lawrence, Byron Murphy Jr. and Budda Baker, to name a few.
Then they have a slew of guys who are questionable: James Conner, Robbie Anderson, Kevin Beachum, Billy Price, Leki Fotu, Antonio Hamilton, Chris Banjo, Marco Wilson, Zach Allen, Zaven Collins and Isaiah Simmons.
Basically, everyone you know and don't know, besides Marquise "Hollywood" Brown, Greg Dortch, AJ Green, Trey McBride, Marcus Golden and the retiring JJ Watt.
The 49ers should pluck the Cardinals and win this game easily -- even without Christian McCaffrey, Dre Greenlaw, Aaron Banks, Deebo Samuel and Elijah Mitchell, if they don't play. The argument for Samuel and Mitchell playing is to help get them into game shape for the playoffs. I don't think that Shanahan will rest anyone completely, but I hope he limits the usage of all the super stars, stars and key starters. It's possible that the 49ers get trapped, while looking forward to wildcard weekend, but I'd say that's very unlikely.
The biggest question on my mind is wether Nick Bosa can get 2.5 or more sacks to beat Aldon Smith's 49ers single season sacks record of 19.5? Either way, Bosa should win the DPOY award.
The second biggest question is whether McCaffrey can overtake Eric Dickerson's record of 1145 yards as the most ever for a midseason acquisition? He already has 1131 yards as 49er, plus 670 as a member of the Panthers equals 1791 total scrimmage yards for the 2022 season thus far.
As always, I will reply to this article with my official score prediction about an hour before kickoff, once we know exactly who will play and who won't.
