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Are the 49ers Looking Ahead to the Ravens?

It will be interesting to see the 49ers' inactive list this week. How many of the players they listed as questionable will actually play?
Grant Cohn|
Are the 49ers Looking Ahead to the Ravens?
Are the 49ers Looking Ahead to the Ravens?

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers said all the right things this week.

They said the Cardinals look like a good team. They said their 3-10 record doesn't truly reflect their talent. They said their quarterback is a one-of-one athlete. They made it seem like the Cardinals really have a chance to win.

But next week, the 49ers will play the Ravens -- a potential Super Bowl preview. It would be hard not to look ahead to that game. Hard not to want to rest all the 49ers injured players this week so they'll be ready for next week against Baltimore.

That's why it will be interesting to see the 49ers' inactive list this week. How many of the players they listed as questionable will actually play? Will Dre Greenlaw play through a hip injury or take the week off? Will Charvarius Ward play through a groin injury? Will Aaron Banks play through a hip injury? Will Spencer Burford play through a knee injury?

Despite all the wonderful things the 49ers said about the Cardinals this week, it's possible the 49ers feel they can beat Arizona without playing most of their injured players. And they're probably right about that.

But the 49ers get in trouble when they have that attitude. That's when they tend to lose games they should win. And if they don't have Dre Greenlaw in addition to Javon Hargrave, Arik Armstead and Oren Burks, the 49ers run defense could really suffer. And the Cardinals are an excellent running team. If they win the line of scrimmage, they could win.

Let's see how seriously the 49ers really take this game.

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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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