Winning by Losing

QB's Mahomes and Garoppolo after the game (Chron photo)

When the 49ers lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs on February 2nd, Bay Area fans were, of course, disappointed.

But not too badly.

The 49ers had far outperformed expectations for the season.

It was a terrific game that wasn't decided until the final minutes.

The 49ers have a good, young team that should make them contenders for years.

2017 Warriors parade, Oakland (WSJ photo)

Now comes the report that many lives were possibly saved because the 49ers did not have a victory parade:

It’s impossible to know precisely how many people would have packed the streets to fete quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, coach Kyle Shanahan and the rest of the 49ers. But it’s possible to offer a rough estimate: a lot of people.

When the Golden State Warriors won their three recent championships, the parades in Oakland attracted reported crowds of between 500,000 to 1.5 million fans.

But wasn't San Francisco's gain Kansas City's loss? Not this time.

...the Chiefs winning the Super Bowl turned out to be a public health savior. Kansas City happened to be one of the last NFL cities to report its first case of the virus, and the hundreds of thousands of long-suffering fans who celebrated on Feb. 5 were about six weeks behind San Francisco. Not until March 18 did Kansas City report its first case. Bay Area residents had been ordered to shelter-in-place by then.

San Francisco fans lamented that Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes was perhaps the only player in the league who could have overcome a 10-point lead against the 49er defense in the fourth quarter.

Thank God he was there, as both cities won.