49ers Odds and Betting Trends

Bet on San Francisco 49ers

Well, for a couple of decades or so there, the San Francisco 49ers were basically the best franchise in football, from the perspective of bettor, fan or student of the game.

Between 1981 and 2002, running from head coach Bill Walsh with Montana & Clark/Rice through HC Steve Mariucci with Garcia & Terrell Owens, the Niners were an enviable 240-104 SU (a .698 winning percentage, or an average season of 11-5) and a profitable 184-155-6 ATS – plus a 23-13 SU/19-17 ATS postseason record including that 5-0 SU/4-1 ATS in Super Bowls.

Since then, not so much. Of any of it. 

San Francisco 49ers

It’s not exactly that the San Francisco 49ers have a particularly awful performance as an NFL franchise overall, but rather a tightly compressed era of two decades’ plus worth of domination virtually unprecedented in the post-merger NFL to that point.

The 49ers were one of three teams to make the jump to the NFL when the NFL merged with/bought out the All-American Football Conference after the 1949 season. In that season, San Francisco concluded with a loss to the dominant Cleveland Browns in the last-ever AAFC championship game, 21-7. In the four years of AAFC play, the 49ers went 38-14-2 cumulative (a .722 winning percentage) and had a winning record each season.

Joining the NFL was followed by a thorough drying-out period: Namely the entire span of the 1950s and 60s, with only a sole playoff loss in the entire run. (This was in 1957 when NFL point spreads weren’t standardized, so it’s impossible to say what a ’spread on the NFC Divisional game might’ve been; against then the-daunting Detroit Lions, the 27-20 SU loss could have covered a few bets…)

Throughout this period, the 49ers were quarterbacked primarily first by future Hall of Famer Y.A. Tittle followed by John Brodie. Brodie hed the starting QB job in San Francisco for 11 consecutive years, and only in his 10th could the 49ers break intro the playoffs. They did so in’70, ’71 and ’72, finally earning the franchise its first-ever playoff win in the 1970 divisional round against the Minnesota Vikings.

But it would be almost another decade before things really got compelling in San Francisco. Bill Wash took over head coaching duties in 1979 and immediately went to work crafting what would become known as the “West Coast Offense” (a moniker Walsh reportedly hated). First trying out the pass-happy game plan with Steve DeBerg for a couple of seasons – in ’80, DeBerg set the record for pass attempts I a season, but the Niners went a limp 6-10 anyway – the system ballooned in 1981 once Joe Montana of Notre Dame arrived.

Montana, armed with Dwight Clark and later Jerry Rice, got the 49ers into the playoffs in all but one of his 10 seasons in San Francisco and bagged three Lombardi trophies. Coming over from the USFL by way of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to replace Montana was Steve Young. Young teamed with Rice and later Terrell Owens to make the playoffs eight times in his nine seasons and get one more Super Bowl win.

Jeff Garcia, ex of the CFL, stepped into the starting job after Young and kept the 49ers magic going for a few more years – as long as T.O. stuck around, anyway. In summation: Between 1981 and 2002, the 49ers were a crazy cumulative 240-104 SU (a .698 winning percentage, or an average season of 11-5) and a profitable 184-155-6 ATS. In addition, 23-13 SU/19-17 ATS postseason record including 5-0 SU/4-1 ATS in Super Bowls.

We don’t mean to depress 49ers fans here, but compare those postseason numbers to the decades sandwiched around the Golden Age… 

https://www.49ers.com/

Summary

The history of the San Francisco 49ers features two running themes, both well more so beginning in 1979: all-star/franchise quarterbacks and winning … lots of winning. To encapsulate an epic story in brief: In the 40 seasons running from ’79 when Bill Walsh became head coach to 2018, the ’Niners ran up an impressive 37-21 SU/30-25-3 ATS in the playoffs – a winning tradition worth the betting!