The last time the San Francisco 49ers had the kind of crisis of faith they’re currently enduring, they wrote it off as a weird emanation from COVID. Back then, they went from ending a season with a Super Bowl loss to Patrick Mahomes to enduring one of double-digit losses, mostly because the bulk of their offensive playmakers were gone for some portion of the season and their defense slipped from elite to meh, bordering on feh. That relative patience was rewarded with a bounce-back season in 2021 and a trip to the conference final, a double-down season in 2022 and another trip to the conference final, and finally another run of excellence in 2023 that ended with ... losing another Super Bowl to Patrick Mahomes.
History has a way of repeating itself, especially where losing to Patrick Mahomes is concerned, but the 49ers do not seem to believe that this cycle is going to make another revolution. Last year was another injury-plagued season that saw the Niners go from double-digit wins to double-digit losses. This time Kyle Shanahan, who runs the building with full acquiescence from the fully satisfied York family, has seemingly decided that the windows are not only closed but need full replacement and double-paning. At least, we think that's what he decided. For the first time in his eight-plus years in charge, he might not actually be in charge.
In what has been a hyperactive NFL free agency period that leads to today's Day 1 of the new league year (cater your party as you see fit), Shanahan has seemingly gone into full demolition mode, turfing out not just half of the starters from that Super Bowl team of 395 days ago but 25 of the 53 roster inhabitants in total. This is happening while the organization is still trying to figure out how much money to pay Brock Purdy. As crises of faith go, this one has some effervescent Spanish Inquisition undertones.
The 49ers' last eight seasons under Shanahan have been wildly wild. They have double-digit wins in four seasons and double-digit losses in the other four, and Shanahan's winning percentage, after having gone to two Super Bowls and four conference finals, is a surprisingly modest .530. Even if you throw out his first two seasons because he was first extinguishing and then cleaning up a dumpster fire left by the team’s post-Harbaugh-power-struggle hangover, Shanahan’s résumé in total is oddly twitchy.
But as we said, this refurb job is more than just a half-hour HGTV episode. Between the out-and-out discards and the free agents who looked for better deals because Jed York and the team’s change-sorters are in the early spasms of an "organizational reset," the 49ers seem to be easing into retrenchment mode. The new, more Costco-tastic 49ers will enter the new season without familiar names like Deebo Samuel, Dre Greenlaw, Leonard Floyd, Charvarius Ward, and Kyle Juszczyk, and they also failed to make a splashy hire like Joey Bosa that would calm the fan base in the way that locking up Christian McCaffrey did. The 49ers now almost need to have the draft of the century to avoid another lost season, which leads to speculative toss-offs about Shanahan's future in Santa Clara like this one, from Mike Florio:
"The roster changes, coupled with the reported 'organizational reset' when it comes to paying players, slides the 49ers from the short list of high-end NFC contenders. And the franchise’s attempt to re-crash that specific party will hinge largely on whether quarterback Brock Purdy justifies the extension the 49ers seem to be poised to give him—unless they decide to play hardball with him. It makes for potentially awkward times in San Francisco. And it could create a rift between coach Kyle Shanahan and the folks who count the beans. It could end up being the kind of rift that could eventually lead to a parting of the ways that, after a season or two of not having an elite roster, Shanahan may welcome."
Question: Does anyone count beans any more?
In other words, the 49ers' cycle as annual contenders looks to have ended after three years, and Jed The Boy Prince, who hired Shanahan so he wouldn't have to do any more football stuff, is now Jed The Adult Auditor. If we're buying that, it would be something like a top-down palace coup, part of the ongoing multi-front billionaires' revolution happening throughout the culture.
But we have to buy it first. We have to imagine that York, who hired Shanahan so that he would never again have to answer publicly for his team's organizational disasters, somehow wants to get back into the business of having people flying planes over the stadium with streamers that read "FIRE JED." The family recently bought a majority stake in Leeds United, and if they manage to screw up what looks like a solid chance at promotion to the Premier League, he could turn the rare double of being hated by his team's fans on two continents. Even for a nepo-adult, that seems reckless.
Then again, the cycle of owners can mirror the cycle of coaches, with years of comfortable anonymity interspersed with periods of ill-considered and obnoxious quarter-choking. This could certainly be Shanahan having his wings clipped by someone who knows much less than him but is on the supply end of the salary trail. It might also be Shanahan embarking on his own rebuild after having found himself stuck in the cul-de-sac of almost. Either way, the good news for Niners agnostics across the land is that the team may become less fun on the field and more fun upstairs, because chaotic showy ignorance is the new sexy. You don't have to be a football fan to enjoy a rich person making themself a self-parodic spectacle. These days, you take your fun wherever you can find it, and whatever mutant form it takes.
