Last season, the San Francisco 49ers didn't make the playoffs until the closing moments of their Week 18 contest against the Los Angeles Rams. This season, the 49ers locked up the division in Week 15 with three more games to play. They played those games knowing they could not fall below the No. 3 seed and eventually overtook the Minnesota Vikings for the No. 2 seed.
The early division crown has had its benefits and its drawbacks.
"This was the first time that I've been in this position, and our team—I think most of the people," Shanahan explained on Tuesday. "But just to clinch the division as early as we did, just knowing you're going to be in the playoffs, was just different. Your goal is always to get there, and then you deal with whatever. And once you do get there, you try to make it the best you can, but to know that we won the division that long ago, it's been a challenge. And every week, you've got to get up because you know you've still got a lot to play for, and we've been able to do that."
The 49ers still had something to play for entering their final game against the Arizona Cardinals. Yes, they were already guaranteed a home playoff game by way of winning the NFC West. However, they needed to win to hold onto the No. 2 seed. San Francisco also had a slight chance at earning the No. 1 seed but needed the Philadelphia Eagles to stumble against the New York Giants, which they did not.
"Last week was the biggest challenge because we knew how important that game was to win," Shanahan continued. "We were expecting Philly to win and stuff, but we knew if we lost that game—we were expecting Minnesota to win too—so we felt we had a lot to lose if we lost it. And also the risk of guys getting injured too because guys want to get to the playoffs so bad and do their best there, but it's not like you're just guaranteed to get in there and have all these [opportunities].
"You're guaranteed you have one [opportunity], so you've got to make sure that [opportunity] is the best, and we've been working on that the last month."
This past weekend, there was a sense of relief on the 49ers' sideline when San Francisco took a commanding lead in the second half.
"Right when we could tell the game was out of hand versus Arizona, I think everybody was like that," Shanahan shared. "We're like, 'All right, finally, we made it. We took care of business. We did as good as we can in this situation that we had. And for the most part, we stayed pretty healthy doing it.'
"I think once we got to that fourth quarter, everybody was thinking about it. We got home as fast as we can, and just started waiting to find out who we were playing. And very quickly, we found out and realized we had lost a day because we were playing Saturday, and we're ready to go."
On Saturday, the 49ers will open the playoffs by hosting the Seattle Seahawks at Levi's Stadium. It will be the second time the two teams have met in the postseason, the third time they've met this season, and the 50th meeting all-time.
No Kalia Davis this season
As expected, the 49ers will not be activating rookie defensive lineman Kalia Davis from the non-football injury list. They will allow his practice window to close. The team opened Davis' practice window on December 20, 2022, to give the rookie practice reps, and had until Tuesday to decide his roster status. He missed the offseason due to an ACL injury he suffered at UCF in October of 2021.