At 3-8, the 49ers already are eliminated from the playoff picture and just trying to make some positive noise over their final five games.
But Sunday’s matchup against the Bears in Chicago looks menacing for a number of reasons.
For one thing, the Bears are hot. Chicago is just 5-6 but has won three of its past four games including a 17-13 victory over Green Bay on Thanksgiving. Chicago also has beaten the Chargers and Rams and suffered just a narrow 17-15 loss to the Broncos.
Also, the Bears defense has been rugged and ranks 14th in the NFL and No. 2 against the pass. Offensively, too, the Bears are dangerous with quarterback Jay Cutler and some talented running backs and receivers (Matt Forte, Jeremy Langford, Martellus Bennett, Zach Miller and Alshon Jeffery).
And then there’s this: As bad as the 49ers have been overall in 2015, they’ve been even worse on the road, where they are 0-5.
Oddsmakers have made the Bears 7½-point favorites in large part because the Niners have bellyflopped on other teams’ fields under first-year head coach Jim Tomsula.
San Francisco’s defense has allowed 15.8 points per game at home, but 35.2 on the road. While the 49ers are 3-3 at home this season, they’ve gone winless in their road uniforms with an average margin of defeat of 21 points. They’ve lost 43-18 at Pittsburgh, 47-7 at Arizona, 30-27 at New York, 27-6 at St. Louis and 29-13 at Seattle.
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As longtime Bay Area columnist Tim Kawakami noted recently, one of the hallmarks of the 49ers under head coach Jim Harbaugh was his team’s ability to win on the road. Under Harbaugh, the 49ers were 21-11 in regular-season road games and 3-1 away from home in the playoffs.
Kawakami likened Tomsula’s tenure to the reigns of former 49ers head coaches Dennis Erickson, Mike Singletary and Mike Nolan, who also were woeful on the road, going a combined 14-50.
Wrote Kawakami: “This is pretty much how you define a strong team: Can you pick off huge wins on the road when the stakes are high?”
So far, Tomsula’s team hasn’t shown it can. After opening the season with a strong victory over the Vikings, the season immediately began its death spiral with lopsided losses on the road at Pittsburgh and Arizona, followed two weeks later by a loss in the East to the Giants.
A victory in Chicago Sunday (10 a.m. kickoff) would be a surprising reversal of this year's road blues.
