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The San Francisco 49ers travel to the Pacific Northwest on Sunday to face the Seattle Seahawks in a fairly huge Week 2 matchup. Playoff spots will not be determined this weekend, but it is the biggest game of the coming Sunday. The 49ers and Seahawks are two of the favorites in the NFC, and the team that clinches the division would potentially be on the fast track to Super Bowl XLVIII.
And of course, the 49ers and Seahawks have as strong a rivalry as you'll find in the NFL these days. It may not have the historical significance of other NFL rivalries, but these two teams (or at least their fanbases) do not like each other. It should make for a fun Sunday night. The Seahawks have the regular season edge at this point, having thoroughly waxed the 49ers late last season (if you forgot, just ask any Seahawks fan and they'll tell you). The 49ers have the overall edge considering they went to the Super Bowl.
The Seahawks enter Sunday's game as three point favorites, although one site has dropped that down to 2.5 points. The home team automatically gets three points in the spread, with everything else moving based on that. That would indicate to some extent that on a neutral field, this matchup is a toss up. That is not exactly a shocking revelation.
I tweeted out the initial line last night, and some people were quick to dump on the Seahawks given their struggles against the Carolina Panthers. While the Seahawks did not look pretty in getting that win, any time a west coast team can get a win on the east coast with a 10 a.m. PT start, that is more than enough. The Seahawks have some things to clean up, but I wouldn't look at Sunday's game as proof the Seahawks are not what we thought they were.
That being said, the 49ers won their own game while looking less than perfect much of the time. We saw the 49ers struggle on tackles, and with the always slippery Russell Wilson, the 49ers will need to clean that up. if they can do that, I'd like to hope the 49ers can do better than the ugly 42-13 loss. The 49ers are not coming off the late Sunday Night Football east coast game. The 49ers were plenty bad on their own, but having that late trip back the week before couldn't have helped matters.
The 49ers are healthy and rested, and would seem ready to roll into Seattle. It's a tough road game, but the 49ers are good enough to go into Seattle and win. They need to clean up their execution, but this is a winnable game.