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Niner Talk: 49ers-Seahawks Week 16

The longest tenured member of the San Francisco 49ers joined us for this week’s Niner Talk podcast.

Brian Jennings, a two-time Pro Bowl long snapper in his 13 seasons in San Francisco, checked in this week to discuss a number of topics near and dear to the specialist’s heart.

Sunday night’s road matchup against the Seattle Seahawks, Jennings’ passion for yoga and golf, plus his thoughts on having Christmas at home this year – were all discussed in the lengthy interview with the 49ers long snapper.

For the Seattle Seahawks perspective, we welcomed back Clare Farnsworth, lead writer for Seahawks.com, to hear his thoughts on Russell Wilson’s development, the status of Richard Sherman and key storylines to track on Sunday night.

Click here to listen to the Niner Talk podcast, which is also available on our 49ers Gameday live App.

Here are some of the highlights from both interviews.

BRIAN JENNINGS

[1:00 – Jennings’ thoughts on Sunday’s opportunity to repeat as division champs.]

“Coming off a big win at New England, it was a long trip. We have to recover. We have to get healthy, get fresh. I particularly noticed yesterday I was a little fatigued for a Wednesday. I was feeling pretty run down from the long trip and so I made a point of making sure I took care of myself in these next couple of days, work out and get ready to go. I think when we play good football, we’re tough to beat. We have to make sure we need to get back to where we need to be. I think our plan is going in and I trust our coaches, they come up with good plans every week. So we need to regroup, go out there and give it our best.”

 [9:50 – Jennings’ thoughts on having Christmas off this season.]

“Being a professional football player, our priorities are very much on preparing for the next game. Even during the holiday season, often during seasons we’ll practice on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day. We’ll play on Christmas Day whenever it falls. This is a unique schedule for the guys in the NFL. We’re tremendously blessed to be in the NFL, but it’s definitely a huge sacrifice. When you understand the meaning of Christmas and what it means to your family, the sacrifices my family makes is giving me up on those days. They understand this is the job we signed up for, it’s not for everybody. It’s a huge sacrifice that needs to be acknowledged. This year, having my two boys, my beautiful bride on Christmas Day, hopefully we’ll get as much time off as possible on Tuesday. I can imagine that we’d be able to get quite a few hours off on this one. It’s a tremendous blessing. We’re excited to spend this holiday season together, that’s really what it’s about for me – seeing the look on my little boys’ faces and the joy in my wife’s eyes when we spend time together.”

CLARE FARNSWORTH

[13:50 – Farnsworth’s thoughts on Seattle and San Francisco continuing the trend of NFL teams going to young quarterbacks right away.]

“It’s funny. All the talk Week 7 was about defense because the offenses weren’t doing all that much. ‘How are they going to score any points? How are they going to generate any offense?’ Well now, both offenses have matured and progressed over the season. Now it’s kind of like, ‘How are these defenses going to stop these guys?’ When they drafted Russell in the third-round a lot of people were wondering what they were doing here and then when Pete Carroll named him the starter over Matt Flynn, it was, ‘What are we doing here?’ We’re now seeing what they’re doing here. They’ve started to run zone-read stuff with Wilson midway through the season and he’s shown he can do more that they’re allowing him to do it. The success of the zone-read was really apparent in the win over the Buffalo Bills because when the quarterback is faking to a back like Marshawn Lynch, you could see the Bills defenders leaning in that direction. They didn’t want Lynch to gash them, which allowed Wilson to pull the ball and look for lanes. It’s been really effective, no more so than the win over the Bills in Toronto. Wilson ran for three touchdowns and was not touched on any of them. That’s been a huge development for the Seahawks.”

 [23:20 – Farnsworth’s key to beating the 49ers.]

“The key thing here is Frank Gore. When the Seahawks have been able to limit him, they’ve been able to beat the 49ers. When he gets some long runs, a lot of carries, a lot of yards against them, they’ve had a hard time beating this team. Once again, that remains a huge factor in this game especially because it’s going to be played in the loudest outdoor stadium in the league. It’s not just hype; it’s a reality that. Kaepernick is going to find out about it.”