49ers’ cure for Third Game Syndrome: Beat the Falcons

This is the opening to my Thursday article on the 49ers’ pattern of winning two games and not winning the third.

SANTA CLARA — The 49ers suffer from a rare condition called Third Game Syndrome. They win two games in a row and then they don’t win the third. They’ve repeated this pattern five times this season. They’ve just notched their sixth two-game win streak, and the third game looms.

Third Game Syndrome (TGS) is the Unknown Factor, the X factor of the 49ers’ season. No one can pinpoint the cause of TGS, although some have tried. In their 12 wins, the 49ers beat their opponents by an average of 17.3 points, but in every third game, the 49ers were outscored by an average of 15.2 points.

How can a team play so well for two weeks and so poorly every third game?

Some 49ers dismiss TGS entirely. “We’re not really aware of that,” Donte Whitner said. “We don’t worry about that. It doesn’t really matter. I think it’s just a coincidence.”

Jim Harbaugh chooses to see the positive side to TGS: “(There are) probably quite a few teams that would want that pattern,” he said.

He has a point. If you suffer from full-blown TGS, you’re winning twice as many games as you’re losing, and that’s very good. But here’s a strange fact: Of the 92 teams to play in the 46 Super Bowls, every one of them had at least one winning streak of at least three games in the regular season. No team with full-blown TGS has ever made the Super Bowl.

To read the full article, click here.

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