The 49ers haven’t won that highly coveted sixth Vince Lombardi Trophy, but they’ve been one of the better teams in the NFL for a while.
Still, football fans rarely give San Francisco the credit it deserves due to its shortcomings on the game’s biggest stage.
Enter 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk. He is tired of his team's reputation as chokers who are unable to win the big ones. “Juice,” joined by San Francisco teammate Christian McCaffrey, dispelled the “49ers can’t win a big game” noise Monday on KNBR’s “Papa and Lund.”
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“One of the narratives that I hate to hear about us as a team is that, ‘Oh, the 49ers can’t win the big game,’ because, you know, we lost in two Super Bowls,” Juszczyk told Greg Papa and John Lund. “It’s just crazy. If you know anything about football, you realize how many big games we did win in order to put ourselves in those positions.”
Juszczyk is right.
The 49ers wouldn’t have been in two Super Bowls over the last five seasons without big-time wins in the regular season and especially in the playoffs.
And the 12-year NFL veteran has receipts.
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“I mean, in ‘22, we started like 3-5 and had to win 12 games in a row,” Juszczyk recalled off the top of his head. “Those were big games. And winning in the NFC Championship when you’re down 17 at halftime, that was winning a really big game.”
After having a poor first two months of the 2022 NFL season, the 49ers handled every remaining week like a playoff game.
And the 17-point comeback Juszczyk was referring to came in the NFC Championship Game against the Detroit Lions at Levi’s Stadium this past season. That one was to go to the Super Bowl, which Juszczyk cited as something naysayers forget about.
But Juszczyk was as honest as he was irritated, acknowledging that San Francisco needs to get the Super Bowl win it desperately needs.
"So, I just hate to hear that narrative,” Juszczyk said. “But we do know that if we have that chance again in the Super Bowl, we just got to finish the job.”
Juszczyk is done with the weak takes, and he knows San Francisco has the team to “win the big game.”