49ers vs Buccaneers Predictions: San Fran to run up the score

Sky have somewhat surprisingly picked the Buccaneers trip to San Franciso to take on the 49ers as the second game of their Sunday double-header this week.

As usual @NFLGirlUK is here with her preview of this game and she picks out a couple of bets for you to consider…

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers got a nice win over the Tennessee Titans in Week 10, but they have to run into a buzzsaw in the San Francisco 49ers in Week 11. San Francisco just whooped the Jacksonville Jaguars with the help of their two returning stars that we’ll get to later. For now, let’s dive right into what this matchup might entail.

This is a scary game for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, because this 49ers team is coming off that big win. However, Tampa Bay is coming in off a good win of their own. Baker Mayfield has been pretty good as the starting quarterback down there, and the weapons are helping to make his job easier. We’ve seen Mike Evans and Chris Godwin continue to put up numbers with their ground game still trying to get their legs under them.

Overall, the offense can be dangerous, it’s just going to be a significantly difficult matchup with this 49ers defense. On the other side of things, the Buccaneers defense is going to have their work cut out for them.

This group was ripped to shreds against the Houston Texans a few weeks ago, and we’ve seen them give up some big plays a few times now. They are unbelievably talented, but going against an offense like this could prove to be difficult at times. It’ll ultimately be up to them to try and keep Tampa Bay in this game.

Flipping to the 49ers now, they are feeling themselves again. They lost three straight games heading into a tough matchup with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and things weren’t looking good. During that losing stretch, the team didn’t have Deebo Samuel or Trent Williams.

In their absence, Brock Purdy didn’t play very well at all, and questions over this team’s legitimacy were all over the place. Then, this team gets both of those stars back into the line-up and they destroy the Jaguars without breaking a sweat.

There’s a lot of confidence and swagger out of San Francisco right now, especially with their leaders back from their injuries. That’s not even mentioning their defense with both Nick Bosa and Chase Young sharing a defensive line, and Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw sharing the middle of the field. It’s a dangerous time to play the 49ers.s

It’s really tough to see the Buccaneers wind up winning this football game. They have a ton of talented players on both sides of the ball, but they don’t match up very well. San Francisco’s defense should limit and harass Mayfield and the Buccaneers offense. This would leave most of the game in the hands of the Buccaneers defense.

Despite the big plays, they’ve actually limited opposing teams to 20 points or under in every single contest except two. One was the 39-point showing from Houston and the other was a 24-point showing from the Buffalo Bills. Will this defense be able to slow down a cocky 49ers’ offense? I don’t believe that it’s going to be the case and San Francisco will get another big win, this time at home in front of their fans.

Match Odds:

It should come as absolutely no surprise to see San Francisco priced up as the 12.5pt favourites on the handicap. This is the second biggest point spread of the weekend behind only the 13.5pts Las Vegas are getting at Miami.

Straight up you are getting 2/13 for a 49ers win with the 9/2 available if you want to back Baker Mayfield and company to pull off one of the bigger upsets of the season. Points are not expected to be scored in bulk with the over/under line set at 42.5.

Bet 1 – San Francisco-12.5 points @ 10/11

Yeah I’m not going to play around and look too deeply at the markets with my first bet of this game. Looking directly at the spread and like three of the four other NFL Tipsters on the site, I like the home side to roll big. The line was at 10.5 when the guys did their NFL Week 11 Predictions column earlier in the week and clearly the punters are still coming in on the side of Purdy & Co.

Bet 2 – Christian McCaffrey over 74.5 rushing yards @ 11/10

When you have a Rolls-Royce, you don’t just sit there and admire it, you go for a drive. That is what Kyle Shanahan has in his superstar Running Back and boy do the 49ers force-feed him the ball.

In the middle of the season, we saw a dip in his production, which was coupled with Brock Purdy having issues with accuracy and an injury-crisis at receiver, this allowed teams to key in on McCaffrey and stuff the box. With most of the offensive weapons back, it gives #23 every chance to get back to his early-season numbers on the ground.

You can read all of the NFL Betting Tips from the team at Betfred Insights on our NFL hub page…