There are still three games left to play in the 2023 NFL regular season. And for San Francisco, that includes a game Monday night against the AFC’s best team, the Baltimore Ravens. But let’s just pause for a moment and appreciate how dominant San Francisco has been this year.

On offense, the 49ers are averaging 9.45 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. ^[1]ANY/A is simply yards per attempt, with a 20-yard bonus for sacks, a 45-yard penalty for interceptions, and includes sack data. That is significantly better than the rest of the league; Miami ranks second at 7.89, and Houston ranks third at 7.07. The league average this season is 5.79 ANY/A, meaning San Franciso is averaging 3.66 ANY/A more than the average team. How remarkable is that? Well, if it holds up, it would finish as the third best of the Super Bowl era:

Yes, that means this San Francisco offense — with Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Brandon Aiyuk, and Trent Williams — is already one of the best of the Super Bowl era even after you adjust for era. ^[2]Without adjusting for era, the 49ers rank as the 2nd-best passing offense ever. Think about that: every other offense in the Super Bowl era, besides Peyton Manning in his best year and Dan Marino in his best year, has been less efficient than this year’s 49ers team.

But what’s unique about this San Francisco team is that they are pairing a dominant passing offense with a dominant passing defense.

The 49ers defense ranks 3rd in ANY/A allowed on defense — opposing passers are averaging just 4.39 ANY/A against San Francisco — making them one of the best pass defenses in the NFL, too. The graph below shows where each team ranks in passing offense (on the X-Axis) and pass defense (on the Y-Axis, in reverse order). The best teams are up and to the right, and well, San Francisco is in a league of their own:

From a historical perspective, San Francisco is truly remarkable in terms of its pass efficiency on both sides of the ball. One measure of this is by calculating each team’s ANY/A differential. We do this by simply subtracting each team’s defensive ANY/A from its offensive ANY/A (which, by its nature, automatically adjusts for era). By this metric, San Francisco is at +5.06, thanks to a 9.45 ANY/A on offense and 4.39 ANY/A on defense. How good is that? Well, it would be the second-best mark of the Super Bowl era:

It’s been 10 years since any team posted an ANY/A differential of at least 4.00, and that was the 2013 Seahawks. That team, of course, won the Super Bowl. The ’91 Redskins are the last team to post an ANY/A differential of at least +5.00, and that team is one of the greatest of all time. If San Francisco manages to win the Super Bowl this year — even if they fall below +5.00 ANY/A for the season — they would certainly have a claim to being in that discussion.

It’s also worth noting that while San Francisco is dominant in this metric, it’s not like the 49ers are bad at rushing offense or rushing defense, either. The 49ers rank 3rd in rushing efficiency by DVOA standards, and are also 3rd in yards, 2nd in touchdowns, and 5th in yards per carry. The 49ers defense has faced the fewest rushing attempts in the NFL, but they rank as an above-average rush defense by most metrics. And San Francisco ranks 3rd in points and 2nd in points allowed, so the dominance in the passing and running games is translating. If anything, the most surprising thing about the 49ers season is that they are only 11-3, and not 12-1.

In the pre-Super Bowl era, a few other teams stand out as similarly dominant in offensive and defensive ANY/A (’61 Oilers in the AFL, ’58 Colts, ’53 Browns, and a number of teams from the ’30s and ’40s). In the current era of the NFL, it should be impossible for a team to be this far ahead of the rest of the league. But San Francisco has done it, and if they win the Super Bowl, they will have a strong claim for being the best team in the modern era of the NFL… and maybe even longer.