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How the Ravens will Test the 49ers

To be fair, the Ravens lost explosive running back Keaton Mitchell to a knee injury last week and he will not play against the 49ers.
Grant Cohn|
How the Ravens will Test the 49ers
How the Ravens will Test the 49ers

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San Francisco 49ers

The Ravens currently are the best team the AFC has to offer, and they will challenge the 49ers in two ways:

First, the Ravens offense ranks second in the NFL in yards per carry, while the 49ers defense ranks 19th in yards per carry allowed. So the Ravens will commit to the run game, which means they'll commit to exposing the one potential issue on the 49ers.

To be fair, the Ravens lost explosive running back Keaton Mitchell to a knee injury last week and he will not play against the 49ers. But if Arik Armstead or Javon Hargrave or both don't play as they didn't play last week against the Cardinals, then the Ravens should be able to run the ball no matter who they have at running back. Because Lamar Jackson is their leading rusher anyway. And that's why the Ravens almost always lead the league in rushing. Because Jackson functions as a running back, plus he scrambles for big gains. And the 49ers historically have struggled containing quarterbacks who scramble. Just last week, they gave up 49 rushing yards to Kyler Murray, and Jackson is much more difficult to bring down than Murray.

Second, the 49ers have scored the third-most points this season while the Ravens have given up the fewest points of any team in the NFL. Which means the 49ers are accustomed to scoring more than 30 points per game while the Ravens defense is accustomed to giving up fewer than 20 points per game.

Can the 49ers pass the test against an elite team? Not a fraudulent elite team like Dallas and Philly -- a real elite team?

We'll find out soon enough.

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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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