Peter King of NBC Sports released his annual playoff and Super Bowl predictions. No, he does not have the San Francisco 49ers winning Super Bowl 56. Instead, the longtime scribe has that honor belonging to another NFC West team—the Los Angeles Rams. He picks Sean McVay's squad to beat the Buffalo Bills 33-24 in a game scheduled to be played on the Rams' home field at SoFi Stadium.
That would mark the second consecutive season that the Super Bowl victor won the championship in its home stadium.
King does have the Niners among the three Wild Card teams in the NFC, though. The others are the New Orleans Saints and the Seattle Seahawks. So what does the writer predict for Kyle Shanahan's squad? He sees them beating the NFC East champion Dallas Cowboys in the Wild Card round before falling to the defending Super Bowl champion and top-seeded Tampa Bay Buccaneers the next week.
It is worth noting that King has successfully predicted at least one of the two Super Bowl participants in each of the past four years, giving hope to anyone wanting to see a 49ers-Bills Super Bowl matchup. In 2018, he predicted a Patriots-Rams Super Bowl, and that's what it ended up being.
Below are King's NFC playoff predictions for the 2021 season.
NFC Seeds- Tampa Bay
- Green Bay
- L.A. Rams
- Dallas
- San Francisco*
- New Orleans*
- Seattle*
*Wild Cards
Wild Card: Green Bay over Seattle, L.A. Rams over New Orleans, San Francisco over Dallas.
Divisional: Tampa Bay over San Francisco, L.A. Rams over Green Bay.
Conference: L.A. Rams 30, Tampa Bay 27.
Super Bowl LVI, at Los Angeles, Feb. 13, 2022: L.A. Rams 33, Buffalo 24.