If the San Francisco 49ers win their next five games — all at home at Levi’s Stadium — they will be Super Bowl champions.
The next two contests close out the regular season — starting Sunday night against the Chicago Bears and next week against the Seattle Seahawks — and two wins would give the 49ers the No. 1 seed in the NFC and home-field advantage in the playoffs.
The bar has risen quite a bit for the 49ers (11-4) since defensive stalwarts Nick Bosa and Fred Warner went down in weeks 3 and 6, respectively, and even way back to a spring team gathering at coach Kyle Shanahan’s house. Shanahan, unlike previous years, said the goal wasn’t Super Bowl or bust. The team just had too much turnover and was counting on too many young players.
“I think that was awesome that he did that,” quarterback Brock Purdy said. “Because the last couple years, the culture and the teams that we’ve had, that was a realistic goal to go attack the first seed, go make it deep into the playoffs, go make it to the Super Bowl, win it. Those were great goals and realistic.”
But not before this season.
“I think it was just really cool for him to understand our team, where we’re at, and the turnover and all that kind of thing,” Purdy added. “And being real with the older guys that have been here.”
The message was that the 49ers would have to win some close games in the first half of the season and see what the record was by December before they could even dream about playing in Super Bowl LX, which is in Santa Clara, Calif.
“It’s just been really cool because that’s been our mindset,” Purdy said. “Once we just handle business one week at a time, we’re sitting in a good spot. So, it’s just really good coaching on his part.”
Shanahan said he didn’t mention the word “playoffs” all season until he congratulated the team during the meeting the night before San Francisco’s 48-27 road win over the Indianapolis Colts on Monday.
“I just told the guys how proud of them I was,” said Shanahan, whose team clinched a playoff spot last Sunday with the Detroit Lions’ loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers. “I remember starting this offseason, bringing the guys over to my house. It’s been all about trying to get to a Super Bowl, trying to win a Super Bowl. And I wanted to make sure that we didn’t really talk that way this year.
“And now it’s time to position ourselves to try to do something special.”
The pressure was off. To some veteran players, though, it really wasn’t.
“You play the game to win a Super Bowl, right?” left tackle Trent Williams said. “The goal is to compete for a Super Bowl.
“This year we just knew that we had the team that can compete, but we knew it wasn’t going to be like when we just walked through everybody how we did in ’23.”
Tight end George Kittle essentially winked when Shanahan broke from the 49ers’ traditional goals.
“You start every season. … You want to go to the Super Bowl,” Kittle said. “You want to win it. That’s your goal. While I appreciate Kyle saying that, ‘Hey, our mindset’s a little bit different this year,’ I mean, me personally, I’ve always been like, one week at a time.
“We’ve had great teams where we started the year 5-0, lost three games in a row, and then we bounce back and we go off on a roll there. So, it’s always one game at a time for me. … As long as our offense keeps chugging along, that’s all I really care about.”
The offense has been moving pretty well. After Purdy’s career-high five-touchdown performance Monday night, the 49ers are averaging 34.4 points per game during their five-game winning streak.
It’s not quite like old times, but things are definitely building in the right direction.
“Since I’ve been here early in my career, we were dominating teams, and the game was basically over in the fourth quarter,” Purdy said. “And so now it’s like we got to find ways to win all the way through the very end, and keep stacking those wins.
“When (Shanahan) told us that, I sort of started getting my mind wrapped around for the type of season that we’ve had.”
The 49ers are 5-0 when defensive assistant coach Gus Bradley delivers the team’s pregame meeting speech the night before a game. (Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)
Bradley hits right buttons in speeches
Speaking of meetings, the 49ers have a new good-luck charm in defensive assistant Gus Bradley.
Shanahan loves Bradley’s energy, and he turned over the pregame meeting speech that takes place the night before a game to Bradley before the 49ers’ Week 11 game against the Arizona Cardinals. And the 49ers haven’t lost since.
“I don’t take people off when they’re on a heater,” Shanahan said. “He’s been doing an awesome job. I think it’s nice sometimes, you do X’s and O’s all week, and there’s always a message in there about football, about playing a certain way and what we want to do. But it’s also entertaining and makes guys laugh, and it’s a better bedtime story before you go to sleep to get ready to get up and play.”
Kittle went as far as to call Bradley one of the two biggest additions to the team (along with defensive coordinator Robert Saleh) this season.
“He gives the greatest pump-up speeches the night before every game,” Kittle said of the 59-year-old Bradley. “They don’t really have anything to do with football. They’re fun with a good point at the end.
“I view him similar to me, where he loves the game of football, has a great time coaching it and loves every single day, win or lose. I think that bleeds into the entire office and is incredibly helpful.”
Players won’t share the details of the stories, but the former Jacksonville Jaguars head coach hits on everything.
“It could be about taking his son fishing when he was younger,” Shanahan said. “Could be a lady getting pulled over in some town in Alabama. It could be going on a roller coaster with your friends in some amusement park. They’re the most random stories ever, which makes guys laugh, then he brings it full circle and there’s a message eventually that pertains to the game.”
“He’s the most unbelievable speaker I’ve ever heard when it comes to fun pump-up speeches,” running back Christian McCaffrey said.