49ers News: May is the perfect month for season predictions (17-0)
Now healthy, 49ers QB Kurtis Rourke is showing off his arm talent: ‘Heck of a thrower’ (paywall) “ The 6-foot-5, 220-pound Rourke spent his rookie season recovering from ACL surgery and was never activated to the 53-man roster. But he’s been hard at work with the 49ers and QB kinesiologist Rob Williams. Rourke has been sharpening his mechanics with Williams up in Canada — he was born in Kitchener, Ontario — for the past five years. “It’s been mostly getting the footwork down, trying to get a wider base and be able to hit a variety of throws,” Rourke said. “Working on a lot of under-center drops as well, stuff that I didn’t do in college.” …. Williams has been working with Rourke to take the stress off his upper body. “Kurtis is a big body with long levers, and he’s always been an arm thrower, very much sort of an old school, linear arm thrower,” Williams said in a telephone interview. “My approach is just to say that’s great and it’s obviously working for you, but we can be a little more efficient if we can get the rest of the body to help accelerate and propel the arm.” Getting Rourke’s hips and core more involved would help improve his velocity, accuracy and spiral quality. “His ceiling is very, very high,” Williams said. Indiana coach Curt Cignetti compared Rourke to “an old, grizzly NFL vet” whose “calm, cool demeanor” shouldn’t fool people into thinking that he’s not a “warrior.”…. His biggest takeaway from watching Purdy and Jones at meetings, practices and games last season? “It sounds cliche, but just the details that they had every week,” Rourke said. “They put so much thought and detail into everything, to make sure that every single play they knew the details of everything, where our feet are, what coverage it’s good against … all that. I saw what it takes to succeed at a high level like they did.” Barrows: San Francisco 49ers 2026 schedule: Travel-heavy slate includes 5 primetime games (paywall) “The opener will be a good test of foreign-soil approaches. The 49ers plan to arrive well in advance of the game so they can adjust to the vast time zone difference. The Los Angeles Rams will likely arrive in the run-up to the game. The team with the better plan and execution will have an advantage. As far as X’s and O’s, the 49ers had a tough time with the Rams’ three-tight-end packages last year. They should have more options — fifth-round rookie Jaden Dugger? — when it comes to matching up this time.” Matt Maiocco’s way-too-early 49ers game-by-game predictions for 2026 NFL season “After that key NFC West matchup in Week 1, the 49ers will come back to Santa Clara for three consecutive home games. Each of those games is scheduled for the heat of the day, which could lead to some uncomfortable conditions for those seated on the sunny side of Levi’s Stadium. And those three straight home games early in the season mean the 49ers will finish with a road-heavy stretch to cap the regular season. Here is a look at each game on the 49ers’ schedule, along with a knee-jerk prediction. After tabulating the returns, it looks like an 11-6 season and a return trip to the playoffs for Kyle Shanahan and Co.” Wagoner: San Francisco 49ers schedule 2026: Takeaways, predictions “From Nov. 15-29, the 49ers will learn a lot about where they stand in the NFC playoff chase with a road trip to play the Cowboys followed by the Mexico City game against the Vikings and a home date against the defending champion Seahawks. There’s another tough stretch from Weeks 14-16 but that won’t matter if the 49ers don’t get through this November trio of games in good shape. In 2022, the 49ers went to Colorado Springs to acclimate to the altitude before Mexico City and if they do it again, it would make sense to go directly there from Dallas . That could make for a long week and, potentially, lead to some fatigue when the Seahawks come to town.“