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The Biggest Advantage the 49ers Have Over the Eagles

The Eagles are coming off a game that went into overtime -- they probably are exhausted, especially their defense.
Grant Cohn|
The Biggest Advantage the 49ers Have Over the Eagles
The Biggest Advantage the 49ers Have Over the Eagles

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San Francisco 49ers

The Eagles are 10-1 and they're playing at home -- you'd think they'd be the favorite to win this Sunday. But they're not. The 49ers are 3-point favorites to win, and there's a good reason for that.

The 49ers have three extra days to rest and prepare for this game, because they last played on Thursday night, while the Eagles last played on Sunday. So even though the 49ers have to fly cross country and play a game in the rain potentially, they still have a big advantage.

The Eagles are coming off a game that went into overtime -- they probably are exhausted, especially their defense. Meanwhile, the 49ers essentially put away their opponent, the Seahawks, early in the fourth quarter on Thanksgiving. So they're healthier and more rested than Philadelphia.

In addition, the 49ers should be far more prepared for this game than the Eagles, because the 49ers coaches and coordinators will have extra time to watch film and game plan. And the 49ers' coordinators, Kyle Shanahan and Steve Wilks, are extremely experienced, while the Eagles coordinators, Brian Johnson and Sean Desai, are extremely inexperienced. Which means the 49ers' game plan should be much more sophisticated than the Eagles game plan.

As long as Shanahan and Wilks don't overthink things and make game plans that are overly-complicated and cute, they should have a distinct advantage over their counterparts this week. And when the 49ers coaches are locked in, the 49ers are decidedly difficult to beat no matter who they face.

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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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