My Two Favorite 49ers Regular Season Road Victories of All-Time
In the 2023 NFC Championship Game, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the San Francisco 49ers in Philadelphia. The same two teams would play the following December. The start of the rematch was similar to the start of the NFC Championship Game. In the playoff game, the Eagles scored a touchdown on their opening drive while the 49ers had just 37 yards and no points on their first three drives. The 49ers would later score a touchdown with 8:30 left in the second quarter (this memorable run by Christian McCaffrey) to tie the game 7-7. In the rematch, the Eagles had a long opening drive and scored six points in the first quarter while the 49ers had a total of negative six yards and no points on their first two drives. The 49ers then scored a touchdown with 7:15 left in the second quarter to take a 7-6 lead. In both games, there was at most one point separating the teams in the middle of the second quarter.
The difference between the NFC Championship Game and the rematch was what happened following the 49ers' touchdown halfway through the second quarter. In the first game, the Eagles responded to the touchdown by going on a 75-yard touchdown drive en route to a 31-7 win. In the second game, the 49ers' defense stepped up: the 49ers allowed just one first down on the Eagles' subsequent drive and forced a punt. After that, the 49ers scored five more touchdowns on their next five drives (including three by Deebo Samuel) and ended up blowing out the Eagles 42-19. One of those three touchdowns by Samuel reminded me of McCaffrey's touchdown from the previous game. The win was my second favorite regular-season 49ers road victory of all-time.
My favorite regular-season 49ers road victory ever was their victory against the Dallas Cowboys in 1995. Going into the game, the defending Super Bowl champion 49ers were 13.5-point underdogs as they were "just" 5-4 and the Cowboys were 8-1. Furthermore, starting quarterback Steve Young was injured so Elvis Grbac started the game at quarterback for the 49ers. Unlike against the Eagles (in both games), the 49ers started strong: on the second play from scrimmage, Grbac threw an 81-yard touchdown pass to Jerry Rice and the 49ers scored 17 points in the first five minutes (!!) of the game thanks to two Cowboys turnovers.
In the same way that the start of the two 49ers-Eagles games were similar, the start of the 1995 49ers-Cowboys regular season game was similar to the start of the NFC Championship Game between the same two teams the previous year. In that
NFC Championship Game, the 49ers scored twenty-one points in the first eight minutes (!!) of the
game and defeated the Cowboys 38-28. (In the following game, the 49ers won the Super Bowl.) In the rematch, the 49ers went on to win the game 38-20 and the upset victory led
to this great Sports Illustrated cover (which was issued on my birthday!).