The score is 17-13 late in the 4th quarter.
The 49ers lead, but the Seahawks are driving to take the lead.
They reach the red zone, and with less than 40 seconds to go. . .the Seahawks score a TD and win the game 20-17 in Levi’s Stadium.
That’s what happened in the second 49ers-Seahawks matchup last year, that hellish 2024 NFL season where Murphy’s Law played out for San Francisco.
This 2025 season was supposed to be different, but a lot of the ghosts of 2024 appeared in the opener in Seattle.
The special teams were again atrocious.
George Kittle came up lame with a bad hammy in the second quarter (he missed last year’s second Seattle game).
Jauan Jennings also had to leave the game, and Brandon Aiyuk was still out from his ACL tear (missed last year’s game at Levi’s).
However, things played out differently this time around.
Last year, Brock Purdy had a chance to ice the game, but he airmailed Deebo Samuel, leaving the door open for Geno Smith to engineer a game-winning drive.
This year, Purdy came up clutch (with a little help from his friend Jake Tonges), and threw a go-ahead touchdown pass in the final four minutes of a game for the first time in his career, for the people who care about such arbitrary stats.
Last year, first-round receiver Ricky Pearsall was a nonfactor with 2 targets and 0 receptions.
This year, Pearsall looked like a bona fide WR1 with 4 catches for 108 yards.
Last year, Nick Bosa, who was terrorizing Smith all day, had to leave the game in the 3rd quarter with an oblique injury that cost him three games. Smith completed his game-winning drive with a 13-yard TD run.
This year, Bosa was on the field to ice the game with a sack-strip-recovery trifecta on Sam Darnold, Smith’s replacement, after he drove Seattle all the way down to the 9-yard-line.
Last season’s defense under first-time defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen blew three leads in the final two minutes of games and could not stop the run all year.
But with Robert Saleh back in control, the defense shut the door as it had done many times in the past, and held Seattle to a paltry 84 yards (3.2 ypc) on the ground.
Another encouraging sign was Christian McCaffrey was taking himself out of the game, understanding the need to preserve his body for a 17-game season.
McCaffrey gave 49ers fans (and fantasy football owners) a scare when he missed the last two days of practice with a mysterious calf injury, which is usually a harbinger for an Achilles injury. Last season, McCaffrey was a surprising late scratch for the season opener, coincidentally against Saleh’s New York Jets, with bilateral Achilles tendonitis that cost him the first 8 games of the campaign.
There were still some bad vibes.
Purdy emerged from the physical division brawl with a toe injury that could cause him to miss time; he missed two games in 2024.
And beleaguered kicker Jake Moody missed two more field goals, although one was not his fault.
But Moody was finally put out of his seeming misery by being waived.
Moody gets a chance at a fresh start.
And so, too, do the 49ers, who just might have exorcised the demons of 2024.