The San Francisco 49ers continue their NFC West schedule, playing their second of three games against the division on Sunday in the first five weeks of the season, taking on the 2-0 Arizona Cardinals.
The 49ers started their division schedule with a win up in Seattle in Week 1, with Arizona opening the division play with the trip to Levi’s Stadium. This hasn’t been the first time in recent years that the 49ers have opened their home schedule against the Cardinals, with the two teams meeting in the season opener of 2020, with the Cardinals coming out on top in that one by a score of 24-20.
Sunday’s matchup will be the first of two against Kyler Murray, who had his fair share of success against Robert Saleh in the defensive coordinator’s first stint with the 49ers. These are the three numbers to know as the 49ers face Murray and the Cardinals:
Cardinals’ quarterback Kyler Murray averaged 66.75 rushing yards per game in four games against Robert Saleh’s 49ers’ defense from 2019-2020.
Robert Saleh is among the top (if not THE top) defensive minds in the game right now. But, 49ers fans will remember that his Achilles heel was the mobile quarterback. On Sunday against Arizona, he will get his first attempt of his second stint with San Francisco against a running quarterback, with Murray heading to Levi’s Stadium.
Murray – with his small stature – is one of the more slippery quarterbacks to bring down, and he always seemed to have a big game with his legs against the 49ers when Saleh was first here. In his four games against the 49ers in 2019 and 2020, Murray rushed for 267 yards on 34 attempts with a pair of touchdowns, averaging 66.75 rushing yards per game.
The Arizona quarterback has had his fair share of injuries, and because of that, he’s only played against the 49ers four times in the four seasons since Saleh’s original departure. In those four games since, the group of DeMeco Ryans, Steve Wilks, and Nick Sorensen has held Murray to just 155 rushing yards on 23 attempts – an average of 38.75 per game, nearly 30 yards fewer than Saleh – with only a single rushing touchdown.
Against Saleh, Murray had three games with at least 60 yards rushing, peaking with his 91-yard game in Week 1 of the 2020 season. In his four games since, Murray has rushed for more than 50 yards against the 49ers only one time, where he ran for 83 yards and a touchdown in Arizona’s Week 3 win over the 49ers in Santa Clara last season.
Murray arguably has as many weapons as he’s ever had in the passing game with Marvin Harrison Jr. and Trey McBride at hand, but preventing him from getting loose with his legs should be priority No.1 for Saleh.
The Cardinals’ defense averages 7.5 plays faced per drive, second-most behind the Dolphins.
Arizona’s defense was blessed with having two of the bottom-tier offenses in the league to open their season, facing the 20th-ranked offense in terms of yards per game, the Saints in Week 1, and the 22nd-ranked Carolina offense last week. And while Arizona only allowed 35 points in those two games – good enough to be in the top-ten of the league so far – they’ve had their fair share of struggles keeping the opposing offense off the field.
Those 7.5 plays per drive are boosted by Arizona’s inability to prevent first downs. The Cardinals have allowed 23.5 first downs per game in their first two games of the season, the second-most allowed in the league, only ahead of the New York Giants. And while the 49ers offense isn’t at full health, there’s still plenty of talent to exploit Arizona’s issues of allowing drives to continue.
San Francisco’s offense has 47 first downs this season, good for fourth-most in the league behind the Bills, Cowboys, and Colts. With that, the 49ers offense averages 6.6 plays per drive – tied for 10th-longest average drive in the league. While it’s evident that the 49ers prefer Brock Purdy to be healthy on Sunday, Mac Jones showed against New Orleans that he can keep drives going as well.
In Week 1 against Seattle, Purdy led the 49ers on 11 offensive drives. Two of those drives were one play, with the 49ers kneeling the clock out before halftime and the end of the game, leaving nine full drives left. On those nine drives, San Francisco averaged 8.1 plays per drive, with four lasting double-digit plays. In Week 2 against New Orleans with Jones at the helm, San Francisco ran 10 non-end-of-game drives with the offense, averaging 6.7 plays per drive. While there were fewer prolonged drives – only one double-digit drive – and plenty of shorter drives – two three-and-outs and two four-play drives ending in punts – the 49ers offense managed more points in Week 2.
It’s a Cardinals defense that allows longer drives against a 49ers offense that’s happy to have those extended drives. Although with injuries inflicting the Arizona secondary, the 49ers could look downfield for explosive plays, leading to potential short scoring drives.
Arizona is 3-3 at Levi’s Stadium since drafting Murray.
Only Seattle has done better at Levi’s in the span, going 4-3 in Santa Clara; however, the Seahawks are 1-3 since the boogeyman Russell Wilson left with the 49ers winning the lone playoff matchup between the two. The Rams also have had their fair share of struggles at Levi’s, going 2-4 in the same six seasons.
The Cardinals are the only team in the NFC West not to win the division since 2019, making the 49ers’ home struggles against them even more curious. San Francisco has dominated the Seahawks post-Wilson at home and has handled the Rams as well, but it’s been a coin flip against an Arizona team that has struggled to find consistency since taking Murray with the first pick of the 2019 draft.
While Arizona took advantage of the hobbled 2020 49ers and met the 49ers at the end of San Francisco’s 1-5 stretch in the middle of 2021, the 49ers returned to dominance against the lesser Cardinals, beating Arizona at home by a combined score of 73-29 in the two matchups in 2022 and 2023. Arizona returned to its winning form last season, giving the 49ers their first genuine concern that the 2024 season was going south with a 14-point second-half comeback to beat the 49ers 24-23 in Week 5.
To make the Levi’s struggles even more confusing, the 49ers are 4-2 when on the road against Arizona (3-2 in Glendale and 1-0 at Azteca Stadium). Regardless, Arizona tends to put up a fight, despite the apparent discrepancies in the two teams’ rosters over the last few seasons.
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