No team in the league is happier to see October end than the San Francisco 49ers.
October has been by far their least successful month under head coach Kyle Shanahan. Since he took over in 2017, the 49ers are 15-21 in the month. It’s the only month they have a losing record in that stretch. They’re still sub-.500 in October even if we remove 2017 and 2018 where they were a combined 0-9.
The calendar is officially turned to November though where the 49ers tend to turn things around.
In November they’re 14-9 under Shanahan, including 10 consecutive victories dating back to Week 10 of the 2021 season.
Oddly enough, they started 3-5 in that 2021 campaign before rallying back to make a run to the NFC championship game. This season they’re 4-4, but they’re in need of a similar run if they want to win the NFC West and put themselves in position to make the NFC championship game.
While their play in October wasn’t great, there were signs of progress as the month ended. In their final three games, they converted 66.7 percent of their red zone trips into touchdowns after being near 40 percent for the season before that. Their win over the Dallas Cowboys in Week 8 also saw the 49ers get back to some of the fundamental strengths of their offense with short throws and yards-after-catch.
If those trends are a sign of things to come, we should see another strong November showing for the 49ers. History says this is the time Shanahan teams start playing their best football. San Francisco needs another year of that in 2024, because another rough October means they don’t have the margin for error to overcome a lackluster November.
