In the tank for San Francisco's success?

The 49ers' recent playoff success shows that being bad can in fact be a pretty good recipe for getting good.

Since joining the NFC West in 2002, the Seahawks have won nine division titles. That’s almost twice as many as San Francisco, which has now won five in that time.

However, Sunday will mark the 49ers’ fifth appearance in the NFC Championship in the past 20 seasons whereas the Seahawks have made it that far only three times.

So while the 49ers don’t make the playoffs as often as Seattle, when they do, they tend to go farther. And when San Francisco misses the playoffs, it tends to be worse. Much, much worse, and I say this not to poke holes in San Francisco’s success this season, but to point out a pretty compelling counterargument to my oft-stated belief that rooting for your team to stink so it gets a good draft pick is a mistake. The 49ers have been bad for a couple of different stretches the past 20 years. Really bad, and by rolling around in the basement from 2015 through 2018, they accumulated the high-end picks that have helped make them really, really good right now. While I’m not quite ready to surrender my opposition toward tanking, it did make me think I’ve been overly dismissive of that idea.