The college football season was put to bed on Monday night with the defending National Champion Georgia Bulldogs thanking the TCU Horned Frogs for coming and be sure to pick up their consolation gifts on their way home.

With that done, all attention in football shifts to the opening of the National Football League playoffs on Saturday when the San Francisco 49ers host the Seattle Seahawks to kickoff the six game Wild Card Weekend. It is time for the talking heads on television and radio to roll out their common refrains about playoff action. One that we will no doubt hear, given there are three matchups this weekend that involve division opponents who have already played each other twice this season, is this:

‘It is really tough to beat the same team three times in the same season.’

We will hear that echoed more often than the reverberation of someone yelling hello into a hollow cave.

It sounds so logical, and is accepted almost without question as true.

It’s not.

Want to know something more difficult than beating someone three times in the same season? Defeating an opponent in the playoffs that has already handled you twice in the regular season. Want to know the stats so when you hear the false claim repeated you can allow a Cheshire Cat grin to cross your lips?

Since the American and National Football Leagues merged into the American and National Football Conferences of the NFL in 1970, there have been 130 playoff games between division opponents that met twice during the regular season. In 55 of those games, the two teams had split their regular season contests. In the 22 games that involved one team that swept the two regular season games against their postseason opponent, the winner of the first two games went on to tack on a third victory 14 times. In other words, teams looking to sweep are 14-8, 64% winners.

Last year, the San Francisco 49ers carried a six game winning streak into the NFC Championship Game against the Los Angeles Rams. That run included two regular season wins in 2021, and last year the Rams became one of the minority teams to win in the playoffs after losing a pair of games to their opponent in the regular season.

For the record, in the loss to the Rams last January, the 49ers beat the point spread, losing the game by three points, 20-17, while getting 3½ points on the line. This year, the 49ers downed the Rams two more times during the regular season.

The 49ers postseason opening opponent is also a squad that they downed twice this year. San Francisco beat the Seattle Seahawks in second week action, 27-7, and again four weeks ago in a Monday Night Football affair, 21-13.

So, I suspect there will be a lot of banter in the Northwest this week about how hard it is to defeat a team three times in the same season and how 49ers rookie quarterback Brock Purdy is headed into uncharted territory as he opens behind center in his first postseason start.

Well, if those are the two elements Seattle fans are banking on to have them compete favorably against the 49ers this week, we know two things; first, beating a team for a third time is a lot easier than beating a team that has already pinned your team with two regular season losses. And second, Purdy has checked every box in leading the 49ers to wins in all five of his NFL starts.

In fact, four weeks ago, when he beat the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field, he won his first road game as the 49ers starter. Two weeks ago, he led the 49ers back from a double-digit deficit on the road to down the Las Vegas Raiders. Last week, in the final regular season game, Purdy led a decisive win over the Arizona Cardinals to clinch the second seed in the NFC playoffs for the 49ers.

Purdy has checked all the boxes in leading up to this playoff game, and there is scarce evidence to buck his chances of earning his first postseason win too … and we expect it will be by double-digits in a point spread covering decision.

Qoxhi Picks: San Francisco 49ers (-9½) over Seattle Seahawks