It should be the easiest game on the schedule.

A first-year head coach. An inexperienced quarterback. A team that lost by two touchdowns in Week 1 to another that won three games last season.

At home, in front of the Faithful for the first time this season.

Pencil in the “W” already, right? Forget that, write it in Sharpie.

But wait, watch out: It might be a trap.

In all likelihood, the 49ers will improve to 2-0 this week against the Dolphins. But not if they look past Jeff Hafley’s lowly roster, the youngest and least experienced in the NFL.

The Dolphins might be the closest thing the league has to a college team, but there’s a reason why the phrase is “Any given Sunday,” not “Any given Saturday.”

Layer on top any lingering effects from their Week 1 trip to Australia and this one has all the makings of one of those games on the schedule that can trip up the better team.

Kyle Shanahan is making sure that isn’t lost on his players.

“I think the greatness in our team in general is having a head coach like Kyle Shanahan who paints the picture perfectly for the situation week to week,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “He did that exact same thing this week, letting us know the challenges that the Dolphins present and the challenge that we have as a team to really get better coming off the Rams game.”

The Niners will play their second straight football game following almost 16 hours in the air. They looked no worse for the wear in their 27-7 win over the Rams, and they’ll have had even more time to readjust when they take the field at Levi’s Stadium on Sunday.

Still, it’s just one more possible complication in a game that should under normal circumstances produce one of the widest margins of victory of the season. Bettors haven’t been dissuaded, with the spread growing even wider in the Niners’ favor, up to 13 ½ points a day before kickoff.

“I mean, it’s the National Football League,” defensive coordinator Raheem Morris said. “You better come ready every single week, or there’s a piece of humble pie waiting around the corner for you. Our head coach preaches that. It’s our building. It’s the mentality.”

Hafley is searching for his first win as a head coach, and surely it would be satisfying to come at his former place of work. He was on the same coaching staff as Shanahan in Cleveland and became his defensive backs coach for his first two seasons in San Francisco.

As Packers defensive coordinator in 2024, he bottled up Christian McCaffrey for 31 yards while limiting Shanahan’s offense to one of its worst outputs of the season in a 38-10 win.

That said, Brock Purdy presents somewhat more of a challenge than Brandon Allen.

If familiarity helps bridge the talent disparity, Miami has another brain to pick in offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik, who was also one of Shanahan’s first assistants in San Francisco.

Shanahan called Hafley “one of the best coaches I’ve been around,” so he’s not allowing his team to take the Dolphins for granted. Although they were handed a decisive defeat by the Raiders in Hafley’s debut, Shanahan took note of the tenacity of their defense, “even though the game was over on play 67 and they’re just running the clock out.”

Could they be setting themselves up for a trap game? Sure.

Does it seem like they’re allowing themselves to fall for it? Nah.

“To say you don’t worry about it, I’d be lying,” Morris said. “But we’re definitely going to teach that message.”

Marquee matchup: De’Von Achane vs. 49ers’ front seven

The talent gap between these teams is so wide that even the remotest possibility of an upset hinges on the Dolphins’ ability to break off an explosive play or three, and it probably isn’t coming from Malik Willis in the passing game. Achane’s 4.32 40-yard dash speed is a different story. He set an NFL record (minimum 100 attempts) averaging 5.7 yards per carry last season, and defensive coordinator Raheem Morris acknowledged that the diminutive-but-explosive 5-foot-8 running back “presents a lot of challenges for us,” adding that he “gets mistaken [for] an outside runner, but he lowers his pads, he runs for the extra yards … then, if you’re not careful, he can make a really explosive run or catch.” That could be especially true for Morris’ unit, which allowed the Rams to average 5.1 yards per attempt on the ground in the first half of their Week 1 win.

The score: 49ers 28, Dolphins 17

No amount of jet lag should prevent the Niners from improving to 2-0 against a Miami team that may contend for the worst record in the league when it’s all said and done. It might be closer than it should be, though. Hafley had his team in wine country this week adjusting to the time difference — three hours? pfft — and they’ll reward the first-year coach with a better effort than Week 1 against the Raiders and at least keep it within two touchdowns.

4 Downs

Keys to the game

1. BACK TO NORMAL: Kyle Shanahan said he “felt like crap” at first after the 49ers got home from Australia, but the head coach and most of his players seemed to be back to their normal selves by the time they began to install their game plan for the Dolphins. San Francisco did everything to set itself up to come home from its almost 8,000-mile Week 1 trip with a win. Now, it’s the Niners’ job to get back on the routines they’ll be on for the rest of the season.

2. EXPERIENCE COUNTS: Even if the Niners aren’t quite themselves, they should still be able to sleepwalk through this game. Like their coach’s Tesla, they can put it in autopilot mode. That’s because this will be Shanahan’s, George Kittle’s and Kyle Juszczyk’s 10th home opener at Levi’s Stadium. It will be Fred Warner’s ninth and Nick Bosa’s eighth. According to NFL research, the 49ers’ Week 1 roster was the oldest in the NFL, with an average age of 27.49. The team on the opposite sidelines is also on the opposite side of the spectrum, with the Dolphins checking in at 25.09, the NFL’s youngest and least experienced roster. 

3. KEEP ON RUNNING: Offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak has the inside scoop on the Dolphins’ defense. His brother Klint Kubiak, the Raiders’ head coach, gashed Sean Duggan’s defense for 151 yards on 30 carries between Ashton Jeanty and Mike Washington Jr. last week on their way to a 27-13 Week 1 win. “I would say it’s cool to talk about,” Klay said. “But it doesn’t change anything.” He shouldn’t need any extra incentive to keep handing the ball off to Christian McCaffrey and Kaelon Black after the duo impressively balanced the workload in Week 1.

4. MAKE MALIK SHAKE: Just five teams failed to record a sack last week, and two of them will be in Santa Clara on Sunday. That’s a sore spot for the 49ers, who finished last in the league last season, but you can bet they like their chances of getting their hands on Malik Willis. Although they didn’t sack Matthew Stafford last week, they pressured him on 28% of his dropbacks. Meanwhile, Miami allowed a league-worst five sacks and a 40% pressure rate.