The San Francisco 49ers could neither withstand nor survive. What was supposed to be a test of resilience for the 49ers turned into a one-sided dismantling as the Seattle Seahawks steamrolled them 41-6 in the NFC Divisional Round on Saturday. And, from the FOX broadcast booth, Tom Brady didn’t sugarcoat while describing what he was witnessing.
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As the score ballooned and Seattle continued to take the game farther away from the Niners, Brady took time to contextualize just how improbable the 49ers’ run had been. At one point in the season, no one would have wagered that they would reach so far.
Despite devastating injuries to core players, including Brock Purdy (turf toe), Nick Bosa (ACL), Fred Warner (ankle), and George Kittle (Achilles), San Francisco still won 12 regular-season games. On top of that, they knocked off defending champions, the Philadelphia Eagles, on the road in the Wild Card round.
“It’s kind of remarkable what this Niners team has done this year. The resilience, the adversity they’ve dealt with all year with the injuries… to get to this point is nothing short of a miracle,” Brady said during the broadcast.
However, this is not all that he said about San Fran’s troubling injury-riddled season. Allegedly, Brady made an offhand remark on the 49ers’ woes, presumably after RB Christian McCaffrey went down late in the first half.
“The 49ers’ team bus should be an ambulance,” the FOX broadcaster apparently said, a remark that has now gone viral on social media.
Bro, Tom Brady said “the 49ers team bus should be an ambulance” #FTTB
— Christopher (@CRiley1111) January 18, 2026
It definitely was a cheeky roast by TB12, but it also was a reflection of what was unfolding on the field, especially for Brock Purdy. From the opening kickoff return touchdown, Purdy was under siege.
Seattle’s defensive front, as expected, collapsed the pocket almost instantly on nearly every dropback, forcing the 49ers’ talisman into survival mode rather than execution mode. And as it turned out, across 33 dropbacks, Purdy ran a combined 413 yards behind the line of scrimmage just to evade pressure.
That number prompted Brady to draw a comparison that sounded flattering on the surface, but wasn’t exactly praise. “That’s almost like Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl, I played against him,” Brady said on Purdy’s stats.
The reference was to Super Bowl LV, when Brady’s Buccaneers overwhelmed Mahomes behind a shattered O-line. And the Chiefs’ QB ran for nearly 500 yards behind the line of scrimmage that night.
The same happened to Purdy, who finished 15-of-27 for 140 yards, 0 touchdowns, and an interception. While these numbers aren’t an indictment of his ability, they are definitely evidence of a structural collapse and how he barely had any protection.
Which again takes us back to Brady’s “ambulance” dig. If the 49ers had not lost their first-string O-line and offensive weapons to injuries, this game would have been wildly different.
Having Kittle would have provided San Francisco with an additional offensive outlet. They could have also banked on the services of Nick Bosa to trouble an already injured Sam Darnold. The list of what-ifs for the 49ers is quite long this season.
As Brady rightly said, it’s remarkable how far the Niners reached so far with all their injuries. So even if they end the season with no rings, what they are taking away is character. And as we have often seen, teams with grit, talent, and personality often end up winning the Super Bowl sooner, rather than later.
