49ers: Notes from Week 11 and looking ahead to Week 17

With only six games left and an onslaught of tough teams lined up to face the San Francisco 49ers, can Jimmy Garoppolo crew survive enough to clinch home-field advantage?

The San Francisco 49ers pulled out another hard-fought game that started off very sloppy thanks to one Jimmy Garoppolo.

Garoppolo put his team in a bad position with two interceptions, but at the same time showcased his heroics once again by exploding in the second half to defeat the Arizona Cardinals 36-26.

This was a great result. The 49ers avoided disaster and didn’t drop two-straight games. Garoppolo started off slow but battled back.

The 49ers overcame a 16-0 deficit. And the Cardinals covered the 11-point spread by a point, so we made some money with the Arizona +11 spread and San Francisco moneyline bets.

But now things get tough for the 9-1 49ers as they host the Green Bay Packers and travel to Baltimore and New Orleans in the next three weeks.

This team has proven time and time again how resilient they are and that they can handle tough tasks — the Los Angeles Rams and Carolina Panthers games come to mind. But honestly, if they came out of this three-game stretch with two wins, I’ll be very surprised.

I think the best they can hope for is a win this week against the Packers who are not typically that great on the West Coast and have proven they can be bullied around a bit in the trenches — something that these Niners are great at.

More from San Francisco 49ers

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• 49ers: George Kittle and Deebo Samuel cleared to return to practice
• 49ers expected to place DE Dee Ford on injured reserve
• 49ers sign TE Daniel Helm off the Buccaneers practice squad
• 49ers: Jordan Reed could miss up to two months, will be placed on IR

Yes, Aaron Rodgers will be the best quarterback they’ll play this year and we just saw what great quarterbacks can do to this 49ers team, but if the Los Angeles Chargers can knock Rodgers’ team around, so too can these 49ers.

On the road against Baltimore and New Orleans will be extremely tough to come out of unscathed. Lamar Jackson feasts on teams he’s seeing for the first time and the Saints rarely lose at home.

They’re back on track with Drew Brees returning to form — there are many more reasons I think the 49ers will lose those two games, but we’ll get to them when those games come up.

So, I would say the 49ers come out of Week 14 with a 10-3 record and beat up on the Atlanta Falcons in Week 15 to move to 11-3.

More from Golden Gate Sports

• Raiders: Rookie stock report following Week 3 performance
• 49ers sign new long snapper amidst a flurry of roster moves
• Oakland Athletics win Game 2 of Wild Card round with late-inning drama
• 49ers: George Kittle and Deebo Samuel cleared to return to practice
• 49ers expected to place DE Dee Ford on injured reserve

Then the last two weeks of the season are going to be very interesting. They have the Rams at home and then end the season in Seattle for a rematch with Russell Wilson. On paper, you would think they’d lose to Seattle and cream the Rams as they did in their last meeting.

But I’m going to go the opposite way and say they lose to the Rams and knock off the Seahawks at the ‘Link’ to win the division at 12-4.

This team is about to go through a whirlwind of five very good teams in six games that could easily knock them back to the fringe of a playoff berth. But they’ve proven all year long that they’re focused and can handle the better teams of this league.

They barely went down to the Seahawks last week in a Super Bowl-like atmosphere. They won’t go down easily in their coming losses either.

They are still very much a Super Bowl contender in my eyes, but they have to try their damnedest to secure home-field advantage because if they have to go to New Orleans for an NFC Championship Game, I don’t love their chances.