The 49ers took care of business with a 27-10 victory over the Commanders, then clinched the NFC’s No. 1 seed with the Cardinals’ 35-31 win over the Eagles.
Members of the team watched the final plays of Arizona’s victory from the tunnel and locker room at FedEx Field before being able to celebrate on the cross-country plane ride back to the Bay Area.
“It was awesome,” head coach Kyle Shanahan said, via David Bonilla of 49erswebzone.com. “Really try to not pay attention to it; didn’t want to get our hearts broken, but we did right there at the end, and they pulled it out. It was pretty cool to see.”
Though the 49ers now have nothing left to play for in the regular season, they’ll host the Rams in Week 18. In the immediate aftermath of the win, Shanahan said he hadn’t thought about the plan for playing time next Sunday and whether that would include starters.
“We were just focused on this [game],” Shanahan said. “We’ll definitely try to rest some guys, but you can’t rest everybody. It’s too hard. You don’t have enough players.
“So we’ve got to field a team, without a doubt, but we’re going to have a big week of practice. I still think there’s lots of things we got to obviously get a lot better at. And the only way you do that is playing football and practicing football. So we’ll have a big Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, figure out our roster as the week goes, and decide what we’ll do for Sunday.”
But for now, the 49ers are content to celebrate clinching the top seed.
“We were all in there watching those final seconds,” linebacker Fred Warner said, via Bonilla. “Thank you, Cardinals.”
