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The 49ers are 2.5-Point Favorites to Beat the Rams in Week 3

The Rams will have the best quarterback on the field, so that's an advantage for them. Brock Purdy is good, but Matthew Stafford is elite and a champion.
Grant Cohn|
Sep 17, 2023; Inglewood, California, USA; Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford (9) sets to
Sep 17, 2023; Inglewood, California, USA; Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford (9) sets to | Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers haven't faced this version of the Rams yet.

These teams played each other in Los Angeles during Week 2 of last season, and the 49ers won by 7 points. But Aaron Donald played in that game and Cooper Kupp didn't. Since then, Donald has retired and Kupp has returned from injury. And now, the 49ers are 2.5-point favorites for their Week 3 game on the road against the Rams.

As any 49ers fan knows, road games in Los Angeles really are more like home games for the 49ers because their fans fill up SoFi Stadium much more than Rams fans do. The stands look like a sea of red. So that's an advantage for the 49ers.

But the Rams will have the best quarterback on the field, so that's an advantage for them. Brock Purdy is good, but Matthew Stafford is elite and a champion.

In addition, Stafford has two elite wide receivers -- Kupp and Puca Nacua. The 49ers never have faced the 49ers when all three of those players have been on the field together, so this is a new challenge for San Francisco. The Rams won 7 of their final 8 regular season games, then lost their first playoff game to the Lions by 1 point. They seem to match up well with the 49ers.

The biggest advantage the Rams have is their offensive line -- it's excellent. As opposed to the 49ers' offensive line, which is barely good enough. The Rams give Stafford time to dice up a defense, while the 49ers ask Purdy to get rid of the ball as quickly as possible.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 49ers and Rams split their two games this season and the Rams win this one.

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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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