The Comeback

The 49ers’ unbelievable, back-from-the-dead victory over the Detroit Lions ranks up there with “The Catch” in the annals of San Francisco sports.

AP photo/Mark J. Terrill

I have been a diehard 49er fan since the late 1970s. Those 40-plus years have been filled with glory and agony, of epic victories and crushing defeats, and my memories of both are equally vivid. It’s been 36 years, but I still remember the moment when Joe Montana, facing 2^nd-and-20 with 1:15 left in Super Bowl XXIII, hit Jerry Rice on a maximum-degree-of-difficulty 27-yard deep in pattern, setting up the broken-play touchdown to John Taylor with 34 seconds left that gave the 49ers their third Super Bowl victory. The almost out-of-body euphoria I felt at that moment is matched by the disbelieving pain I felt when Roger Craig fumbled with 2:36 against the Giants in the 1990 NFC Championship game. There’s a locked drawer in my mind where I have stashed the bogus 27-yard pass interference call on the great cornerback Eric Wright that gift-wrapped the 1984 NFC championship game to the Redskins.

I could go on and on, from Billy “White Shoes” Johnson of execrable Hail Mary memory to Dan Bunz’s ferocious goal-line tackle to Jim Harbaugh’s ill-starred decision not to run Frank Gore on the last drive against the Ravens in the Super Bowl to Terrell Owens’s double-crunch catch against the Packers. But like every 49er fan, I have a special place in my heart for that play in the 1981 NFC championship game against the Cowboys, when a backpedaling Montana threw off his back foot to the end zone, a pass that looked like a throwaway until plodding, white-man-can’t-jump poster boy Dwight Clark magically soared into the air, somehow snagged the bottom half of the ball with his fingers, and started the 49ers on the road to becoming one of football’s great dynasties.

That play, of course, is simply known as “The Catch.” In order for yesterday’s victory in the NFC championship game to earn its own two-word title, the 49ers will have to beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII. But no matter what happens, the 49ers’ astonishing win over the Detroit Lions was one of the greatest victories in franchise history.

The 49ers had no right to win this game. They stunk out the joint in the first half so badly that it was hard to believe they were even in the playoffs at all, let alone they were favored to win the NFC. The Lions were kicking their ass in every conceivable way. They passed at will. They ran at will. They made the 49ers’ high-powered offense look feeble and confused. The most discouraging, and actually shocking, thing was that the Lions’offensive line, admittedly one of the best in football, was just destroying our vaunted defensive line. Football games are won and lost in the trenches, especially on the defensive line. The great 49ers teams have had exceptionally strong D-lines, featuring great players like Charles Haley, Fred Dean, DeForest Buckner, Justin Smith, and Bryant Young. The teams’ current brain trust, general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan, have doubled down on that philosophy, spending huge amounts of money on high-end players like superstar defensive end Nick Bosa and defensive tackles Javon Hargrave and Arik Armstead.

Most of this season, that allocation of resources paid off. The ferociously fast, extremely strong, insanely wasp-waisted Bosa was a constant menace as both a pass rusher and a run stopper, while Hargrave and Armstead clogged up the middle. It’s true that the 49ers only had an average rushing defense this year, but the overall defense, thanks in large part to the stellar play of crazy-fast superstar linebacker Fred Warner, his violent fellow ‘backer Dre Gleenlaw and first-rate cornerback Charvarius “Mooney” Ward, remained one of the best in the NFL.

Yet in the first half, Detroit’s offensive line simply shoved our celebrated defensive line backwards. It seemed like the line of scrimmage moved two or three yards in the wrong direction every time. Just as damaging, time and again the Lions took advantage of a weakness previously exploited by Green Bay, our defensive ends’ lack of discipline and inability to set the edge. Free agent pickup Chase Young was particularly victimized, but Bosa was guilty as well. The Lions’ running backs, bruising David Montgomery and uber-talented rookie speedster Jahmyr Gibbs, ran riot, either racing through big holes in the middle of the line or breaking free outside. Other suspect areas of our defense—mediocrity at safety, lack of depth at cornerback, and an all-too-frequent, across-the-board tendency to take bad angles and miss tackles—were also exposed. When the first half ended, the Lions were up 24-7 and had amassed a staggering 148 yards on the ground, gaining an embarrassing seven yards a carry. They were on pace to challenge the all-time record for rushing yards in a playoff game, 341, set by the Buffalo Bills in 1995.

On the other side of the ball, the fairy-tale saga of Brock Purdy was threatening to end not with a bang but a whimper. Anyone who has watched all of the former “Mr. Irrelevant’s” games over the last two years, and doesn’t have some weird axe to grind, knows how extraordinarily talented he is, and how moronic the claim that he is just a “game manager,” code word for a warm body who owes his success to Kyle Shanahan’s mad-scientist offensive schemes and a ridiculous plethora of playmakers like Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, and George Kittle. Purdy is the real thing. He can make all the throws, he can improvise when things break down, and he’s gritty. There’s a reason his 2023 season was one of the best statistical QB seasons of all time. However, he just turned 24, he had a terrible game against Green Bay until he came alive during the last drive, and this was the NFC championship. After Purdy served up a terrible interception that led to the Lions’ third touchdown, it was hard not to listen to a dark, Gollum-like inner voice whispering that the moment might be too big for him. After all, even Lamar Jackson reawakened all the “can’t win the big games” talk when he didn’t play well against Kansas City in the AFC Championship game yesterday, and he’s a six-year vet and the league’s presumptive MVP.   

Purdy sucked. The defense sucked. Everybody sucked. The first half was a beat-down so comprehensive that it called into question everything we thought we knew about the 49ers. Was their 12-5 record somehow done with smoke and mirrors? How would we explain to ourselves being humiliatingly routed by a team not nearly as deep and experienced as ours and one we were supposed to beat by a touchdown? Was it a coaching problem? Or did we simply choke?

At halftime, Fred Warner recalled, there were no rah-rah speeches. It was too late for that. “I think we were just pissed off,” Shanahan said. “I think guys were extremely pissed.”

Then came one of the greatest comebacks in 49er history.

Yes, the 49ers got lucky. A long Purdy pass to Aiyuk bounced off the defender’s face mask and into Aiyuk’s hands, a more fortuitous carom than a two-rail bank shot made by a blindfolded drunk. And yes, they benefited from a monumental blunder by Lions’ coach Dan Campbell. Facing 4^th and 2 with 7 minutes left in the third quarter, the hyper-aggressive Campbell chose not to kick a routine 45-yard field goal that would have given his team a 17-point lead, instead going for the jugular. He failed, and he ended up exposing his own team’s throat in the process. (Analytics show that the two decisions were almost a statistical tie in terms of success. But analytics only go so far. Passing on a three-score lead halfway through the 3^rd quarter, which would require a history-making comeback to overcome, to try to ice the game then and there, is a classic case of a decision’s upside not being worth the downside.)

But luck and bad decisions weren’t why the 49ers won this game. They won it because they earned it. They were on the ropes, one hard punch away from being knocked out. And then, like Muhammad Ali against George Foreman, they rose up and started punching back hard and fast. So hard and fast that the Lions hardly knew what hit them.

The 49ers won because they came out in the third quarter, marched down the field and kicked a field goal that made it a two-touchdown game. Because after the 4^th down stop gave them new life, Purdy and Aiyuk hooked up on the are-you-kidding-me face-mask shot, followed by a perfect Purdy laser to Aiyuk that cut the lead to 7. Because the Levi’s crowd, shell-shocked after the first half, roared back to life. Because safety Tashaun Gipson, Sr., who had a miserable first half that included whiffing on Gibbs’ touchdown run, forced a Gibbs fumble. Because the great Christian McCaffrey, the baddest-ass white running back in the history of the NFL, ran for the touchdown that tied the game. And because the entire San Francisco defense, after their worst performance of the year, pulled themselves together, muscled up and started making plays, stopping the Lions dead in their tracks until their last drive, by which time it was too late.   

Maybe most of all, they won because Purdy, the supposed game manager, did what we’ve been watching him do for the last two years. He balled. He was Brock Purdy—gritty and composed and accurate and, when the pressure was greatest, playground loose. Escaping heavy pressure and nearing the line of scrimmage, he threw an eephus pitch to Jauan Jennings, a ridiculous third-down lob that kept the chains moving. He ducked under a certain sack and fired a sideline strike to do-everything fullback Kyle Juszczyk, who tapped the turf with the balletic precision of a wide receiver. He hit George Kittle for a big gain. In the second half, he went 13 of 16 for 174 yards and a touchdown—the kind of spectacular numbers he put up all year long.

And time and again, at the crucial moments when the 49ers needed to keep drives alive, he ran. And he didn’t scamper for a few yards and then slide down. He ran as far and hard as he could, and he hit people before he went down. He ran 8 times for 51 yards, not counting the 3 yards taken away for the end-of-game kneel-down. Two of those runs went for 21 yards each and were backbreakers for the Lions.

Purdy looks and acts like a choir boy, which may be why so many people dismiss him as a game manager. But he’s as tough and competitive as they come. And if he’s no Lamar Jackson or Patrick Mahomes, he’s a lot faster and more athletic than you might think. Just ask Lions linebacker Alex Anzalone, who had a shot to stop Purdy as he took off on a crucial late-game run, only to come up with his face in the turf, a yard late and a Super Bowl short.

“I thought it was the difference between winning and losing,” Shanahan said of Purdy’s runs.

It was an emotional roller-coaster of a game, as extreme in its emotional ups and downs as any 49er game I can remember. And it reminded me again that it’s the combination of finality and unpredictability that makes sports so wonderful, and so painful. A game either ends in victory or defeat. And you don’t know which ending is coming. Whatever story we tell ourselves about a team or a player—and we all invent and cling to those narratives because they offer meaning and comfort—can be vindicated or destroyed in an instant.

On Sunday, whatever narrative 49er fans told themselves about their team was on the verge of becoming a Samuel Beckett play, an absurd tale set in a meaningless void. Then came the second half, and our little football world, a small thing but our own, became perfect again. And if the 49ers can beat the Chiefs in two weeks, that perfection should be honored with its own name: The Comeback.