<\/p>\n
Four years ago, the San Francisco 49ers capped a disastrous, no-good, nothing-could-go-right 2020 season with a loss at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona\u00a0\u2013 their temporary home amid the COVID pandemic.<\/p>\n
So the venue was certainly fitting for the end of another disastrous, no-good, nothing-could-go-right season on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The 49ers finished the 2024 season with six wins and a last-place finish. Thinking back on the last 18 weeks, that status almost feels too positive for this embarrassment of a team.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s not my adjective. It\u2019s star defensive end Nick Bosa\u2019s:<\/p>\n
\u201cKind of an embarrassment. It doesn\u2019t feel good. It\u2019s hard to look the guys in their faces as a leader on the team, and that\u2019s the product that we keep putting out game after game. It\u2019s pretty embarrassing,\u201d Bosa said after the Niners\u2019 47-24 loss to the Cardinals.<\/p>\n
Yes, the 49ers entered the season with a Super Bowl-or-bust attitude, but it busted out well before Sunday.<\/p>\n
Was it Week 15, when the Niners effectively eliminated themselves from playoff contention, or the abysmal losses to bookend Thanksgiving that did the 49ers in?<\/p>\n
Or was the late-game choke loss to the Seahawks in Week 11 the death knell for these Niners?<\/p>\n
Maybe it was Week 7 when the Chiefs came to town and stomped them in a Super Bowl rematch, with the Niners losing Brandon Aiyuk for the season.<\/p>\n
The two early-season fourth-quarter collapses to the Rams and Cardinals were certainly ominous omens. Those losses put the 49ers in a hole from which they never escaped.<\/p>\n
Or one could argue that this season was over after Week 1 \u2013 arguably their best win of the season. That\u2019s when MVP-caliber running back Christian McCaffrey was ruled out at the last minute. The Niners kept him out for two months after that.<\/p>\n
Maybe the 49ers\u2019 season was cursed before it even officially started, when they had the worst training camp in recent memory, marred by aimless, blubbering contract negotiations with Trent Williams and Aiyuk, and a rotating list of absentees, compounded by a sense of entitlement that was never close to justified for this season.<\/p>\n
Oh, and the team\u2019s first-round pick was shot in San Francisco on Labor Day weekend, just for good measure. The football gods went overboard with that smiting \u2013 leave the kids out of it. (Ricky Pearsall, it should be noted, recovered and played as well as any 49er in the season\u2019s final weeks.)<\/p>\n
So, no, this was not just a \u201cdown\u201d year for the Niners. It was a culmination of three or four bad years into one.<\/p>\n
And to fix it, the Niners\u2019 braintrust \u2013 head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch \u2013 need to do the work of three or four good offseasons in the seven months before training camp 2025 arrives.<\/p>\n
This kneecap of a campaign, now mercifully over, will, like the 2020 season, define Shanahan and Lynch.<\/p>\n
The duo built this team up, went to a Super Bowl, lost, and then fell apart the season after.<\/p>\n
But the 2021 49ers were young and spry, and they bounced back (though it took a while for the team to get going). The Niners followed a tough 2020 with three straight NFC Championship Game appearances, proving that the infinitely injurious season was merely a blip. Yes, after resurrecting this organization from the depths of ineptitude, Shanahan and Lynch\u2019s program proved resilient, and it became the envy of the league, spawning copycats from coast to coast.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the thing about the NFL: Unless you have Tom Brady or Patrick Mahomes at quarterback, it\u2019s not built for sustainable success. The acronym might as well stand for \u201cNot For Long.\u201d<\/p>\n
Annual poaching from other teams looking for a bit of the 49ers\u2019 secret sauce depleted the team\u2019s deep bench of players and coaches. Shanahan and Lynch, undoubtedly constrained by a shorter offseason than their peers, proved incapable of replenishing it.<\/p>\n
And that issue is most responsible for this 2024 collapse. Whatever luck smoothed over previous Niners teams\u2019 faults did not come with them to this season, and the team didn\u2019t have the depth on the roster or brainpower in the coaching ranks to remain competitive as injuries reached comical levels.<\/p>\n
If this was another organization \u2013 a worse operation \u2013 Shanahan and Lynch would be looking for new jobs by the time you read this. The 49ers were once that bottom-of-the-barrel operation. Don\u2019t forget that Shanahan was the team\u2019s fourth head coach in four years when he arrived in Santa Clara, California.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s no longer the case. With Shanahan and Lynch calling the shots, the Niners have become one of the steadiest franchises in the NFL. Yes, this is their mess: You\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a team that wasted more money in free agency, all while putting together three of the worst draft classes in the league before a solid 2024. But Shanahan and Lynch\u2019 deserve the opportunity to clean it up.<\/p>\n
Where to begin?<\/p>\n
Frankly, there\u2019s so much to do, anywhere will do.<\/p>\n
After all, the 49ers finished with a worse record than the Dallas Cowboys, who were without their starting quarterback, Dak Prescott, for more than half a season, boasted one of the worst defenses in the NFL and lacked a single viable running back on their roster.<\/p>\n
There are big things, like if they\u2019ll fire their defensive and special teams coordinators and how much they\u2019ll pay quarterback Brock Purdy on a new contract. (That is, if they pay him.) Will Deebo Samuel stick around for another season? That\u2019s a big call to make, too.<\/p>\n
There are the obvious things, like nailing both free agency (even with Purdy signed, they\u2019ll have money to spend) and the draft, as this team needs to replenish its depth overall, with a special focus on its offensive and defensive lines.<\/p>\n
And then there are the little things, like making sure the next batch of entry-level coaches and front-office executives have the moxie and brainpower to quickly move up the ladder, as so many members of the Santa Clara diaspora did before them.<\/p>\n
Between July 2024 and January 2025, it seemed as if nothing went right for the Niners.<\/p>\n
Between January and July 2025, nearly everything will need to go right.<\/p>\n
If that happens, perhaps the Niners can talk about winning a sixth Super Bowl title again in the near future.<\/p>\n
But the right to consider this team \u2013 this organization \u2013 a perennial contender to the crown? That was the 49ers\u2019 most significant loss of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Four years ago, the San Francisco 49ers capped a disastrous, no-good, nothing-could-go-right 2020 season with a loss at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona \u2013 their temporary home amid the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":34935,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,687,580,209,204,206,205,208,12,207,210,50],"class_list":["post-34934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nfl","tag-american-football","tag-american-football-teams","tag-arizona-cardinals","tag-gridiron-football-variants","tag-national-football-league","tag-national-football-league-seasons","tag-national-football-league-teams","tag-national-football-league-teams-seasons","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-seasons-in-american-football","tag-seasons-in-american-sport","tag-sports"],"yoast_head":"\n