Not many seasons for the San Francisco 49ers have come and gone over recent years without the existence of significant obstacles. The infamous 2020 post-Super Bowl season saw the team completely decimated by injuries which dropped the 49ers from 2019 NFC Champs to 6-10 chumps. They have had some bad luck and plenty of bad moments through that time but have managed to be in the post-season mix every year since, making three NFC Championship appearances, with a Super Bowl berth thrown in as well.
Coming off last February's NFL Championship loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, many predicted the 49ers were headed for a major Super Bowl hangover. There may be truth in that prediction, but the situation is fixable, even with the 49ers not playing exceptional ball through nine games.
The 49ers lost a few key players in the off-season, but they also made some nice improvements to counteract those losses. An outstanding draft for San Francisco has now developed into upgraded offensive power for 49ers' Head Coach Kyle Shanahan to deploy, and some impressive rookie contributors on defense (Cornerback Renardo Green and Safety Malik Mustapha, foremost of those) have added to the team's roster depth.
But now past the midway point of the 2024 season, things seem to be off-kilter with the team, and not in a trivial way.
The 49ers' offense remains powerful, ranking in the top three in the NFL—a notable feat considering it's done so without star wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk and megastar running back Christian McCaffrey. But that ranking aside, they seem to be dominating no one—and that's a huge departure from the 49ers of the past half-decade. The defense sits at a respectable 9th, which isn't bad considering the disjointed way in which that unit has sometimes played. The 49ers' special teams have been the dismal corner of the triad in San Francisco, ranking last or near the bottom in most statistical categories.
The 49ers, both organizationally and in the locker room, appear to be introspective about their choppy performance this year. They aren't panicking, but neither are they expressing any real sense of urgency in resolving the problems they have. And given the risky nature of the seas ahead, that doesn't appear to be a great situation. Panic is destructive, but a heightened awareness of danger can be useful, and so far, the 49ers don't seem to possess that.
They've won more than they've lost, and though the statistics don't bear it out, quarterback Brock Purdy is playing the best—or at least the most instinctively advanced—games of his career. His ability to make something from nothing, to come back from adversity, and to step up when it matters has grown. But it's a benefit overshadowed by the fact the 49ers just don't look right.
Since Shanahan and 49ers' General Manager John Lynch came aboard in 2017, the culture in San Francisco changed, and much of the winning ways the team had during the Jim Harbaugh years were restored. The 49ers became a squad that not only showed up in the post-season but bullied its way through teams to get there. Part of that cultural shift involved the team sticking with players and ideas to which the organization had already committed. The 49ers became less reactive to the rolling waves of the NFL as it chose to "stay the course" with most of what it did, and that included roster choices. While that conservatively iron-clad approach to decision-making has kept the team on a good heading the majority of the time, it has also created some unnecessary whirlpools in the water along the way. Shanahan seems to get stuck at times with doubling down on both questionable players and suspect play-calling. And he has since developed an apparent trait of trying to force square pegs into round holes with both.
The examples of carrying under-performing players on the roster aren't rare ones for the 49ers Faithful. Nor are the memories of the team sitting idly by when great players elsewhere in the NFL become unexpectedly available. Maddeningly to the team's fans, the 49ers seem to take eons to change things up when it appears to everyone else that changes indeed need to be made. It feels often like other organizations can zig and zag on decisions while the 49ers use a process that has the reaction time of turning an ocean liner around in ice-covered water. Is some of this just the result of skewed perception? Probably. But there is little debate that the 49ers don't make decisions quickly. Or at least not as quickly as they could.
This sense of being slow to react was at the root of the Brandon Aiyuk contract fiasco, where the season opener had nearly arrived with Aiyuk still reclining on his couch. Much of that delay was caused by Aiyuk himself, but the team's reluctance to secure him earlier in the off-season was both excruciating to watch and ultimately harmed the ability of the offense to get into a rhythm early on. You can chalk that up to the nature of contract negotiations, but regardless of the origin, it displayed an absence of any attention to the ticking clock, which is what is largely killing the 49ers as a team right now.
Shanahan himself, despite his status as an offensive guru, can often get locked into forcing his pre-formed plan during games, rather than acting reflexively to what's happening in real time. His overall success as a head coach is undeniable, but he has framed himself into a wheelhouse that makes him ultimately look stubborn in what he does with his play sheet and has created for him a reputation as a coach who can't hold on to a lead.
The 49ers have improved in some areas of their game since the start of the season, but not greatly enough and not with any consistency. Heading into Week 11, we still don't know who the 2024 49ers are, and that's tremendously deflating, both for fans and the team.
Are the players themselves frustrated with the plodding pace at which the team is operating? Likely so. A sideline incident on Sunday in which the 49ers' most unique weapon, Deebo Samuel, exchanged words with Kicker Jake Moody and long snapper Taybor Pepper after Moody had missed his third field goal of the day wasn't ultimately a big deal, but it is evidence that there's frustration on the field. Deebo apologized for the sideline skirmish later, but in a large sense, he wasn't wrong to express that emotion. The 49ers have stuck with their second-year kicker despite Moody's obvious reliability issues. That's commendable from a human resources standpoint, but in the end, it may not be a very smart football move.
From the start of the Shanahan and Lynch era, the 49ers have been careful and calculated about what they do, and with few exceptions, that philosophy has worked out well. In San Francisco, nothing ever is done with haste, and that's not a terrible thing, because in the NFL, hasty decisions are often catastrophic ones. We can look at what's happening right now in Cleveland and New York to see that in living color. But there's a sweet spot out there between being hasty and being overly cautious, and the 49ers need as an organization to find that place. The 49ers had the opportunity to make bold moves in mid-season trades just weeks ago and decided instead to stand pat. Perhaps the sting of the Trey Lance fiasco is still sore tissue, but it shouldn't be so painful that it holds the team back from moving quickly to change game plans, invest in new players, or even remove players who aren't carrying the load.
The concepts Kyle Shanahan has been sending out on the field aren't working consistently and have become largely thin and predictable. That's not entirely on Shanahan's shoulders as the rest of the league has tuned in to his moves, and the element of surprise has dropped off. But the horrifying nosedive of the team's YAC (yards after catch) should be ringing the warning bells. But it doesn't seem to move the needle much for Shanahan, or even the players. Each week the post-game pressers are rife with the usual language: We need to do better; We're going to take one game at a time; it's a long season.
It is indeed a long season, but it's one evaporating quickly, and the alarm doesn't seem to be going off anywhere in the building. That cool and collected outlook is typical of the 49ers and their organizational philosophy, and it exudes confidence at 8-1. At a click above .500 and clawing to eke out wins each week, that confidence feels more like negligence. The team isn't in sync, and if the bilge pumps don't start pushing out bad water soon, the ship will stop moving and be at the mercy of the current.
Waiting out problems, staying the course, sailing ahead, and hoping for the fog to lift—these are methods that have served the 49ers well in the past. And maybe they still can. But there are squalls ahead, and at 5-4, the seas aren't likely to be very forgiving. The 49ers need to find ways to alter course and must do it quickly. If that means Shanahan creating a new bag of tricks, bringing in new faces, or getting rid of faces that continue to struggle week to week, so be it.
Despite the glitches of the first half of the season, the 49ers can still make a Super Bowl run. They are an outstanding team with a talented roster and an excellent coaching staff. And winning is in their DNA. Few teams have been as successful in playing consistently powerful football. The team's long-standing philosophy doesn't need to change, but perhaps their energy level and sense of urgency do. At least for the next few months.
Deebo Samuel expressed it fairly well, and even if his manners weren't the greatest, the energy was right on.
Lock in.
- Don Atkinson
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Written by:Don Atkinson is a writer and sports analyst for Reach North Media and The Morning Line.
