SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan heard plenty during the bye week from friends and family about the prime position the 49ers are in entering the stretch run of the season.
The Niners (9-4) head into the final four games looking to return to the playoffs despite a string of injuries and maybe even win a division title or earn even the top seed in the NFC with some help.
Shanahan has no interest in thinking about any of that. His only concern right now is preparing for rookie quarterback Cam Ward and the Tennessee Titans (2-11) on Sunday.
“Everyone tries to talk with me and then I usually snap at them,” Shanahan said. “You can just as easily lose four games in a row as win four games in a row. I mean, four games are a long ways away and there are a lot of things that can happen.”
The first hurdle in the closing stretch is one the league's bottom dwellers in the Titans. Tennessee is coming off its second win of the season after holding off fellow also-ran Cleveland last week and now relishes the chance to play spoiler against a contender.
“This is a good football team. They still trying to win their division," star defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons said. "So what better feeling to go up there to kill some dreams?”
The Titans haven't won back-to-back games since November 2022 but interim coach Mike McCoy hopes the formula that was successful in the 31-29 win at Cleveland can carry over this week.
McCoy showed the players video clips Wednesday of complementary football with turnovers, blocked kicks and other key plays. The Titans made those kind of plays last week in ending a seven-game skid. These Titans have started five rookies led by Ward in four games this season with a total of 11 hitting the field last week.
“It’s key for these young guys to understand in the business, you got to start stacking wins as you go and it’s week after week,” McCoy said. “There’s always things you’re going to do to play better from the week before. There’s plenty of mistakes we made in the game, you’ve got to clean up. But it’s important for these guys just to understand the importance of every week, and you just got to build off the momentum you have one week to the other. Because it’s all about winning.”
Christian McCaffrey has been putting up big numbers all season for the 49ers. The touchdowns have really started to add up of late.
McCaffrey ranks fourth in the league with 13 touchdowns, with 10 of those coming in the last eight games. All of McCaffrey's touchdowns have come in the red zone — one shy of Jonathan Taylor's NFL-leading total — with nine of them coming from the 5-yard line or closer.
That has helped San Francisco rank No. 1 in the league over the past nine weeks by scoring TDs on 75.8% of red zone drives.
“He’s always had a nose for the end zone,” left tackle Trent Williams said. “He’s always found a way to get in the end zone. He’s enabled the offensive coordinators to be able to do a large array of things with him and put him in different spots and get him in mismatches. That helps him a lot to get high touchdown numbers.”
The Titans have not won consecutive games since 2022, when they beat Denver on Nov. 13 then won at Green Bay on Nov. 17. Since then, the Titans are 11-41 overall. They got their first win this season with lots of help from Arizona to pull out a 22-21 victory on Oct. 5. The Titans followed that up with a 20-10 loss at Las Vegas.
“That’s the harder part about playing in this league is stacking wins, not having that I guess being comfortable with winning one game,” Simmons said.
Ward, the No. 1 overall draft pick, will become the first rookie to start 14 games in a season for the Titans on Sunday, breaking a tie with Vince Young, who started 13 in 2006. The quarterback praised for his work ethic and burning desire to be great hasn’t seemed very happy with getting his second career victory, and the Titans having to hold on after leading 31-17 in the fourth quarter is a big reason why. Ward said he could see his mistakes while watching replays on the tablet on the sideline.
“There’s a way to win games, there’s a way to finish out games,” Ward said. “There’s a standard that you got to play with every game to give yourself the best situation to win. But the biggest thing is you got to expect to win every time you step on the field.”
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AP Pro Football Writer Teresa M. Walker in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report
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