49ers win frenzied fracas, beat Bears 42-38 to set up NFC showdown with Seattle (paywall)
“With a clear path to the No. 1 seed at stake, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy treated Levi’s Stadium and a national audience to a one-play touchdown for the other team.

Another five touchdowns later, all was forgiven.“

49ers’ bullied, riddled defense steps up at the last possible moment (paywall)
“Middle linebacker Tatum Bethune said either he or weak-side linebacker Dee Winters were supposed to drop back into coverage on the play. They both did, positioning themselves at the center of the action to bump any crossing Bears receivers. What resulted was a crowded end zone, too congested to allow for an open window.”

How 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, ‘in his bag,’ is steering an offensive avalanche (paywall)
“What separates Shanahan as a play-caller? The question made McCaffrey light up. The son of an NFL wide receiver, McCaffrey said he’d been discussing that very topic earlier in the week with family members.

“It’s his understanding of not just offensive football, but defensive football,” McCaffrey said. “I think when your head coach and your offensive play-caller knows defensive football just as well as anybody, it allows us to open up stuff not just in the run game, but in the pass game. He really understands gap integrity, everybody’s responsibility on defense, and he sees it better than anybody.”

McCaffrey was saying Shanahan’s knowledge of defenses makes it easier for him to manipulate them. And he wasn’t done. He said Shanahan even understood “emotions in the defense,” meaning, for example, that Shanahan has a unique ability to anticipate calls from a defensive coordinator with aggressive tendencies and use it against him.

“I think it’s something that he was born to do,” McCaffrey said. “He’s been doing it for a long time at the highest level. And in (his) meetings, it’s like football heaven as a football nerd.”

Hutchinson: The 49ers are the Big 12 Champs (paywall)
“As long as this team creates more possessions on offense than on defense, they should be favorites in every game. And on Sunday, they out-possessioned the Bears 10-9.

It came down to a bit more than that — the 49ers’ final possession of the first half was abbreviated — but this is currently a team that can beat anyone with its offense. The defense just needs to do the bare minimum, and I’m not sure you can even argue they did that on Sunday.

Their personnel decisions on defense — sticking with Luke Gifford who gets torched on every coverage snap, and Ji’Ayir Brown, who looks like chopped liver to any deep throw, never playing Marques Sigle and limiting CJ West’s snaps for inexplicable reasons — are damning. At some point, they have to play man coverage.

I cannot fathom how or why the 49ers went from viewing Sigle as a borderline savant to someone not worth playing at all. He’s the only free safety they have.

But for this moment, the offense might be good enough to overcome all of the defense’s damning flaws.“

49ers face short week ahead of playing Seahawks for No. 1 seed: ‘It’s not ideal’ (paywall)
“At the other end of their sixth straight win in a game that spanned more than three hours late Sunday night, the San Francisco 49ers found out their reward: a Saturday night season finale (5 p.m. PT) against the Seahawks for the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs. Both teams will have to deal with a short week. But for the 49ers, it’ll be their second in a row.

The NFL determined the Ravens-Steelers game, with a playoff berth and the AFC North division at stake, was a better fit for “Sunday Night Football” than a game set to determine the top seed of a conference.“