Week Fifteen

 49ers 45, Arizona 29

With half a dozen defensive regulars sitting out Sunday's game at Arizona due to various injuries, it was incumbent on the 49er offense to score often to avoid an avoidable upset by Kyler Murray and his merry band of Cardinals. 

And the 49er defense indeed looked, well, thin, and out of sorts, as Murray and his mates took the opening kickoff and marched 70 yards for a touchdown, Murray carrying much of the load and James Conner  scoring the points.   

But as they would throughout the game, the 49er offense answered back quickly. Brock Purdy, starting off a four-touchdown, zero-interception day with a 75-yard drive, generated 30 yards through the air and Christian McCaffrey accounted for the other 45. This is sounding very familiar, isn't it?

The defense, perhaps atoning for bad form earlier, then put up a spectacular score on Charvarius Ward's 66-yard return of an interception to complete the first quarter. The second period was a bit of a slog, each team punting once, the Cardinals scoring twice on field goals, and the 49ers reasserting control late in the quarter with a time-consuming drive to a McCaffrey touchdown and a 21-13 lead.

The 49ers scored their fourth TD to open the third quarter, and it slowly got out of hand in the second half as the 49ers rolled up and down the field, building leads of 35-16 and 45-22, and McCaffrey scored his 19th and 20th touchdowns of the season. The defense intercepted Murray twice more and sacked him three times, but consider this: the Cardinals put up 234 rushing yards, and 436 total yards, in a losing effort. That is not a number we want to see heading into the season's third Ultimate Showdown-- Christmas night at home against Baltimore, the only other 11-3 team in the league.

As well as officially clinching the division, the 49ers' Week 15 aftermath was bolstered by the Buffalo Bills' demolition of the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday and by last night's last-minute upset of the Philadelphia Eagles by our old friends, the Seattle Seahawks, who stubbornly remain in the playoff hunt.  

San Francisco now has a one-game lead and holds all the tiebreakers, but for all the giddy talk about a Super Bowl preview and rematch, it still comes down to winning each game. And that means we need the return of the great 49er defense, if we expect to see a scarlet-and-gold Christmas.