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It's okay to blame Jed York for this loss
October 26, 2026
New in Essentially a Take, and filed under satire. The 49ers lost in Atlanta on Sunday, 29-20, their fifth straight regular-season loss there. The last win...
CMC Should Be the New Bettis
October 25, 2026
CMC Should Be the New Bettis The speed chart is not lying, and neither is the eye test. What Christian McCaffrey has left is power, will, and a job Jerome...
The Rehab Quotient, Week 7: Atlanta Is Healthier, and It Is Not Close
October 23, 2026
The Week 7 Rehab Quotient is up. For the first time in his career, Kyle Shanahan cannot fill out a game-day roster. San Francisco will have 22 to 24 players...
Wrong Three Times
October 23, 2026
Christian Kirk has spent eight years proving me wrong. This week I am revising my read before he does it again. The man up top, the three wrong reads, the...
It's Been 25 Years
October 21, 2026
Four trips, four losses, one NFC Championship, and a quarter century of my life. The last time the 49ers won a regular-season game in Atlanta, I was 20 years...
Let's talk about X, baby: the full 64-man board, and why Jeudy is the answer
October 20, 2026
Good morning. Yesterday's column said Mike Evans is the 49ers' fig leaf. Monday night proved it in real time: Evans caught 3 balls for 94 yards, stretched...
The fig leaf is threadbare, and DeFo should come home
October 20, 2026
Good morning. The 49ers beat Washington 23-17 on Monday night to go 6-0, in the most annoying win of the season. Brock Purdy became the highest rated passer...
The Gadfly and The Spreadsheet
October 18, 2026
Faithful, The biggest 49ers story of the week was not played on a field. It was a 2-minute rant on a postgame stream, one reporter accusing another of...
The $199.9 Million Injury Bill
October 17, 2026
Faithful, Every fan base swears its team is the most injured in football. This week I stopped swearing and priced it. The Rehab Quotient is the share of the...
The 49ers Built Their Own Chaos Defense
October 15, 2026
Five games in, the 49ers defense is 3rd in EPA per play, 4th in scoring, and off to the 7th-best DVOA start in history. And the true starting defense has...
Go Marlin Fishing
October 15, 2026
The argument in 49ers country is whether Jauan Jennings should come back. The only question that matters is who pays. He has 2 catches for 9 yards on a 5-0...
Consider yourselves warned
October 13, 2026
Route 49 — Monday night special Tonight's featured story is our own. What John Lynch Saw in the Dark Under the confidentiality rules of an integration...
Route 49: Supersize the order, Mykel Williams is back, and 4-0 meets Seattle
October 10, 2026
From the Take desk Supersize the 49ers to Break the McDonalds Defense — Anthony Nagatani John Schneider spent three years building a defense for one purpose:...
Hashtag MVPurdy
October 8, 2026
Aloha, Brock Purdy is the MVP frontrunner and it's not particularly close. That's the new Take on Essential49ers today: the numbers (126.2 rating, zero...
Route 49 #1: The League That Sells Beer Fined a Man for Pretending to Drink Juice
October 7, 2026
Welcome to Route 49, the Essential 49ers newsletter. Seven curated 49ers stories every morning, plus the occasional editorial from me. It's free. The league...