The San Francisco 49ers are entering their Week 16 matchup against the Indianapolis Colts with a pep in their step. It has nothing to do with their 10-4 record, and everything to do with what happened on Thursday night.
A Seattle Seahawks win over the Los Angeles Rams meant that the 49ers now control their own destiny for the NFC West division and the NFC's number one seed and a potential bye. Win out, and the 49ers are the top seed in the conference.
But, they will first have to get past the Colts and 44-year-old Philip Rivers. Dianna Russini of The Athletic, amid sharing how the league's been inspired by Rivers' return, shared an interesting strategy from the 49ers in preparation for the veteran quarterback.
49ers have interesting strategy to prepare for Philip Rivers in Week 16
With a Monday Night Football matchup between the 49ers and Colts, Rivers will try to secure his first win since unretiring. To stop such a situation from occurring, the 49ers are employing an interesting plan.
"San Francisco did its homework," Russini shared, "watching tape of Rivers dating back to 2010."
The Colts quarterback has been in the NFL for a very long time, and there's ample film to dissect for this matchup. While the 44-year-old quarterback hasn't played since 2020, before his Week 15 matchup against the Seahawks, there's plenty of film to study.
If the 49ers are scouting all of the way back to 2010, then Kyle Shanahan and Robert Saleh will have 177 games' worth of film to dissect. Rivers is 88-89 in those games, and has 48,609 passing yards, 316 touchdowns, and 165 interceptions in this timeframe.
More: 49ers get Philip Rivers news for Week 16 game vs. Colts
There's plenty of film for Saleh, and the defense to prepare for, but Rivers will also be less rusty than he was in Week 15 and could be more of a problem for the 49ers on Monday night.
But the 49ers are trying to prepare as best they can, and are looking at Rivers' film from the last 15 years. Rarely does a team have such extensive film for a quarterback, especially with a lot of the older starters retiring in recent years.
In Rivers' case, however, his sudden unretirement poses an interesting problem. The 49ers need to determine how much to take from his old film, as Rivers is at least five years removed from those performances.
Monday night will be an interesting matchup, and the 49ers are preparing with an equally interesting film study program for Rivers in his second game back from retirement.
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