Cardinals vs 49ers Preview: Predictions and Best Bets | NFL Week 3

Cardinals vs 49ers Preview: Predictions and Best Bets | NFL Week 3

We’re back here on CBS Sports HQ. How about an NFC West showdown this weekend? The Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers both 2 and 0 to start this season. Now, ahead of this week three matchup, here’s a sports line impact that this game will have when it comes to winning the division. So, a lot at stake here when you look at the numbers entering this game. The 49ers with a 43.6% chance of winning the division. Cardinals just with 12.7% with a win that improves for the 49ers 49.6% a loss that drops to 29% and then big yikes there for the Cardinals if they do lose this game just 6% chance of winning the division. Here’s more from both quarterbacks for 49ers. There any difference in in knowing you’re going to start like last week as opposed to this week? Well, I might start. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I mean, as a backup, you know, you’re not playing the first snap, and as a starter, you are. So, um, you got to be ready for both. And at the end of the day, all the externals don’t really matter. Um, you just have to focus on the game plan and getting everything tidied up by Sunday. Um, and that’s what I’m doing, just like a normal week for me and following my schedule and being ready to play if my number’s called. I feel like I’m happy with the progress that I’ve been making with my with my foot and toe. And um so more than anything, it’s it’s just going to be a day-to-day thing on how I feel. Um nothing really more to that. So you would you play this weekend or do you still need to wait and see how it feels in a day or two? Uh definitely just got to got to see, you know, come game time how I feel. It’s not obviously I want to play every game, dude. Like I want to be out there. We only get 17 regular season games and and uh every every game matters, especially a divisional, you know, going against Cardinals. So, um, if you ask me, I’ I’d love to, but I mean, I’m trying to be smart with my body here and, uh, but you never know. We’ll we’ll see when game comes. For more on this NFC West showdown, let’s welcome back John Breach and Ryan Wilson. Guys, you just heard from both Niner quarterbacks. We’re unsure at this point if it’ll be M. Jones or Brock Perie to get the start as Pertie still dealing with a few injuries considering the magnitude of this matchup in terms of the division race. John, where are you at right now with what quarterback is the right decision here? Jordan, for me, this is an absolute no-brainer. I start M. Jones. And Ryan Wilson did not pay me to say that. He is the president of the M. Jones fan club. Uh, so we know what his answer is, but we just heard Brock Party talk there and talking about how, hey, look, if I feel good Sunday, maybe there’s a chance I’ll play. Somebody just needs to tell Brock Purie that the NFL season is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. he’s dealing with a toe injury, he’s dealing with a shoulder injury. If he goes out and plays against the Cardinals and aggravates either of those injuries or makes them worse, uh, and now you’re out three, four, five weeks, that hurts the team. And so I think the 49ers are afforded the luxury of being able to play M. Jones because they’re 2 and 0. So now you’ve built a little bit of margin of error in there. And the other thing is you got to look at the schedule. If you’re San Francisco, you have Arizona this week, which is obviously a huge game. You give M. Jones that one. Jacksonville in week four, a little M. Jones revenge game. But then week five, that’s the game I’m circling. If I’m Brock Purie, that’s a Thursday night game against the Rams. That’s the game you definitely want to be on the field for. And you play that. You get a 10-day break. So plenty of time to heal if you wait until week five to come back. So if I’m the 49ers, I roll with M. Jones in week three and week four. Go to Brock Birdie in week five. Breach. You know what else is a marathon besides the NFL season? being president of the M. Jones fan club. By the way, producer Bony is the vice president. So, there are two of us on that bus right now. But people are jumping on board, guys, because of the way he played last week. And I would just reiterate what I say countless times when you talk about that the quarterbacks coming into the draft from college. Fit matters. Uh you can be really good on a Patriots team when Josh McDaniels is the OC. You can be truly terrible if you’re Patrick Mahomes and traded to the Patriots and uh Matt Patricia’s dialing up plays for you. So, fit matters, confidence matters. Uh all these guys are four or five stars uh coming out of college. Matt Jones won a national title. He was slinging. He was the 15th overall pick in that draft class. Both Dvontis Smith uh and Jaylen Wadd said publicly that there was no secret they preferred Mack as their quarterback to Tua and Tua was a top 10 pick. So I I think what we’re seeing here is uh a perfect fit for the type of game that M. Jones plays. Kyle Shannon has a ton of confidence. He said that publicly. Trent Williams said after the game and before the game that he had a ton of confidence based on what he had seen from Mack uh during the the preseason and that played itself out on the road in New Orleans uh without all the all the all the best players. Brandon still out of course George KD was out with that injury. So was Christian McCaffrey, Jawan Jennings, Ricky Pieraw is playing really well. So I I think Breach’s point is the right one. There is no rush to get your quarterback out there in Brock Perie if he is not ready because you do have a competent backup plan and I think it speaks to the importance of having a really good backup which not every team can afford to do because of salary cap or whatever. So I think Matt Jones makes the most sense and I’m not just saying that as the president of the fan club, Jordan. All right. Well, we’ll take that with a grain of salt. Kyle Shanahan will be speaking to the media later on today. So we should get an answer on who will be starting for the 49ers. will bring you that conference here on uh CBS Sports HQ. Regardless, you guys, of course, the C card Cardinals will have to prepare for both quarterbacks, but you alluded to it, Ryan. Some of them have their preference. Clay Campbell with a little bulletin board material this week saying he’d rather face M. Jones. Here’s a quote. He did add that it’s not a shot because Mack is a firstround talent. He just hasn’t been in this offense a long time. And with Brock, he’s a master of this 49ers offense and he can make it go. I don’t know if he’s wrong here, you guys. And you know, Ryan, you did reference he’s coming off the win over the Saints, but when you look at the stats, M. Jones 0 and7 in his last seven starts after a win. So, Ryan, I don’t know. Opposing teams love to see it. Yeah, that’s not a great stat. You don’t want to bring that into your negotiations for a new contract. I’ll just blame that on Matt Patricia. How about that? The other thing is, and Clay isn’t wrong, Klayas Campbell isn’t one to give out bulletin board material. Matt Jones has not been in that offense in a while. Uh, but he’s incredibly cerebral. Uh, he understands concepts as the quart as the head coach Kyle Shanahan wants them to be played out. And one of the reasons they didn’t draft Mack back in 2021 when they traded up from 12 to three is they felt like the quarterback position was getting more athletic, which it obviously is. We see that with Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson and Trey Lance was perhaps the vision they were hoping that their quarterback would look like. Now it looks more like Brock Perie and M. Jones as it turns out. But Brock Perie, Mr. relevant or not, runs that offense as well as anyone could. And I think that’s why Kyle Shanahan trusts him so much. They’re both not top end athletes. Brock’s a little bit better athlete than than Mack is, but they both have average arms, but they can both make every throw in the in this Kyle Shanahan system. So, I think Kas Campbell is right. And if you pressure Mack, you can see the results in the form of turnovers. But so far so good and I feel pretty good about the offensive line with Trent Williams uh and the way the playmakers have played for Mack uh including that run game in in the one game we saw last week. Yeah, and Cla Campbell is a smart veteran. He knows what he’s doing here. Brock Pury, he’s in his fourth season running this Kyle Shanahan offense. He’s been to two NFC title games in a Super Bowl. He understands all the nuances of the offense. So, of course, I think if you’re the opposing defense, you don’t want to see Brock Pury. And good for Klayas Campbell for being honest about this uh instead of just kind of saying, “Yeah, I don’t care who we see. It doesn’t matter.” No, he actually has the preference here. But I also feel like this is a situation of be careful what you wish for because there’s a reason Kyle Shanahan wanted M. Jones all those years ago because he felt like he’s a guy who could efficiently run the offense. Uh and we saw him do it against the Saints and I think he could look even better against the Cardinals if he gets the chance to start. San Fran will need some solid uh quarterback play from whoever gets the start, but also a little spark, please, from this uh 49ers rushing attack that currently is bottom 10 in the league. McCaffrey, we’ve seen him with some touches, but he hasn’t really been effective. And to really put it into perspective, you guys, McCaffrey and M. Jones right now both have the team’s longest rush this season, a whopping 13 yards. John, how worried are you for them this weekend facing a top 10 run defense? We’re only two weeks in the season, so I’m not completely worried yet. When you look at the 49ers week one game against the Seahawks, they rushed for over 100 yards. They did okay. Uh last week against the Saints, they didn’t. They were held under 80 yards. But the upside there was that Christian McAffrey kind of showed flashes of what we saw two years ago cuz he averaged over four yards a carry against the Saints. And that’s exactly what you want to see out of McAffrey. you’re getting four yards a carry and he’s catching uh five to eight passes out of the backfield, I think you’re going to be comfortable with the numbers he’s going to produce. So, it it’s a slow start to the season and I think eventually this offense will look a lot better. And then one other thing is the Cardinals have the top 10 rushing defense, but look who they played. They played the Panthers and the Saints. So, I think a lot of people pegged as two of possibly the worst teams in the NFL uh before this season started. So, I think this will be their first real test and we’ll see if they can slow McCaffrey down because that offense seems to get better every week. Let’s get to the Cardinals here. Ryan, slight underdog in this one on the road. Few things need to happen if they’re going to pull off this upset and getting their star receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. involved is definitely up there in terms of priority. Guys, among the first round wide receivers selected last year, he has the lowest targets. He was actually asked this week about being targeted just 11 times in the past two weeks. and and he said it’s a silly conversation and said the most important thing right now is that this Cardinals team is 2 and 0. Well, Ryan, it’s equally I think important to get this guy the ball if this team wants to be a contender. Yeah, that’s why you take them top five. But I I think so that you see Malik Neighbors at the top there. Malik Neighbors is the only show in town offensively for the Giants. Uh Roma Dudley is getting more targets this year. Brian Thomas Jr.’s coming off that big year last year when he was the only show in town virtually offensively. Uh they have some guy named Trey McBride who plays tight end for the Cardinals. He’s one of the best tight ends in the league. He’s currently third in receptions uh with 12 or 13. I believe Marvin Harrison Jr. has seven receptions which ranks 39th among all wide receivers. So you’re getting it to one of your playmakers and perhaps you could provide some balance in terms of getting to your other playmaker Marvin Harrison Jr. But I think he’s right. Look, as long as we’re winning, there’s nothing to complain about because Kyler Murray’s distributing the ball and getting it to the guy that’s open. Kyler’s actually playing at a pretty high clip as well as as in terms of a passer. I would like to see Marvin Harrison get more involved because you don’t draft a guy top five to to not target him. Uh but I do give Kyler credit for for going to the player uh who is open more often and Tyler, excuse me, Terry McBride is certainly taking advantage of that. So this is actually a good problem to have, but we ideally would like to see a little bit more balance in terms of the the the pass distribution. All right, we’ll see if we get to see that on Sunday. Coming right back to you here, Ryan. Let’s get a game pick from you. Come on. You know, Mccoral Jones all day long and if he’s on the bench holding the clipboard, I’m going with the 49ers. Silly question. I’m on the same page as Ryan. 49ers 2016. But I will say it feels like a tough game to predict because we don’t know who the starting quarterback is going to be for the 49ers. And the Cardinals two wins are against two teams that have a combined zero victories this year. So, we don’t know how real they are, but we’re going to find out Sunday. All right. We definitely will. sports line projection by the guy. By the way, you guys uh has it that the Niners will win 27-23. Ahead of this game, here’s where things are currently, where it stands in the NFC West. The 49ers 2 and 0. Cardinals also 2-0. This big matchup kicks off at 4:25 Eastern time on Sunday. [Music]

John Breech and Ryan Wilson join CBS Sports HQ to preview the Week 3 matchup between the Cardinals and 49ers. Should the 49ers stick with Mac Jones and NOT rush Brock Purdy?

(00:00) Intro
(00:47) Mac Jones speaks on potential start
(01:18) Brock Purdy gives an update on injury
(01:56) Should the 49ers stick with Mac Jones?
(05:29) Calais Campbell: ‘I’d much rather play Mac Jones’
(08:09) 49ers run game facing top-10 rush defense
(09:31) Marvin Harrison Jr. targeted only 11 times in 1st 2 weeks
(11:09) Predictions

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