Los Angeles Rams can’t afford to sleep on San Francisco 49ers after Week 6 results
By Dan Parzych
Despite the San Francisco 49ers only having one win heading into Week 7, the Los Angeles Rams know the last thing they can afford to do is take a light approach to his NFC West meeting.
A few months ago, Sunday’s meeting between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers was circled by many on the calendar, mainly due to the hype surrounding this rival being on the rise.
While the Rams look like a team in the perfect position to be a serious contender in the NFC for years to come with a quarterback on the rise in Jared Goff, the 49ers were in a similar position with Jimmy Garoppolo.
Even though Garoppolo wasn’t on the same level as Goff, just the fact that these two would be squaring off twice a season in the NFC West for years to come brought all sorts of new excitement to the rivalry.
Unfortunately, things took a turn for the worst last month when Garoppolo suffered a torn ACL, putting an end to the 49ers quarterback’s season earlier than expected, meaning C.J. Beathard would be the man moving forward for the offense under center.
On paper, Beathard doesn’t even come close to the level of Garoppolo, but the former Iowa star has done a pretty good job for the most part since filling in with multiple touchdown passes in each of the last three games.
Reducing his turnovers would be great for San Francisco, but also Beathard deserves some benefit of the doubt since he is inexperienced, and a backup for a reason.
Still, just because the Rams will be facing the 49ers with Beathard under center doesn’t necessarily mean this is going to be an easy win come Sunday.
In fact, when looking at how close Beathard came to leading San Francisco to what would have been one of the biggest upsets from Week 6 if they had defeated the Green Bay Packers,
With this in mind, the Rams would be foolish to think the 49ers won’t use what happened on Monday as motivation for Week 7, only with the hope of different results.
Even though there’s still plenty of football remaining in 2018, the chances of a team like San Francisco making the playoffs all things considered seems like an absolute long shot, meaning they have nothing to lose over these next few months.
Taking down an undefeated team in Los Angeles won’t be easy, but there’s nothing San Francisco would love more than to hand Sean McVay‘s team their first loss of 2018. And who knows, maybe if that does end up happening in which the Rams suffer their first loss, the 49ers will be better off in the NFC than most football fans expected them to be.