A Rams win on Thursday would all but eliminate San Francisco from playoff contention
Thursday’s game between the Rams and the 49ers could end with both teams having the same record, but the outcome still means a lot more to San Francisco than it does to L.A. because of divisional records, head to head matchups, and remaining schedule.
If the Rams lose, their playoff odds drop to about 25%, but if the Rams win it effectively ends the Niners season.
According to The Upshot playoff odds, the 49ers hold 4% odds to make the playoffs, which is not good but San Francisco’s hopes would improve considerably if they could win their next two games against the Rams and the struggling Miami Dolphins.
However, a Rams win over the 49ers and their percentage drops to less than 1% of outcomes in over 100,000 simulations of the rest of the season.
The Rams’ only mission is to keep pace with Seattle until their season finale rematch. If the Rams can stay within a game of the Seahawks and then beat them in Week 18, they would have the tiebreaker advantage over Seattle and win the NFC West unless one of the other two teams has a better record.
However, it is unlikely that the Rams could win the NFC West and not have a better record than the other two teams because L.A. plays the 49ers, Cardinals, and Seahawks in three of their last four games. If the Rams win, obviously those teams lose.
But the 49ers don’t have any advantages and they don’t have any time to make up for lost games.
The 49ers hold a 1-3 divisional record with a win over the Seahawks. They have two NFC West games left after splitting the season series with Seattle, but they can also do no better than splitting with the Rams. If they lose to the Rams and drop to 1-4 in the division, there’s no way to recover from that.
And even if San Francisco end up 8-7 going into their penultimate game of the season, that is against the Detroit Lions in Week 17. The Lions most likely won’t be sitting any starters at that point because they could still have to play for the number one seed and Dan Campbell doesn’t want to give players three weeks of rest between games.
The 49ers are a much worse team than the Lions.
Even if the 49ers go 3-1 the rest of the season with wins over the Rams, Dolphins, and Cardinals, they would still have less than 10% playoff odds.
But the Niners need to beat the Rams. And the Rams need to make sure they don’t.