At least Kyle Shanahan, Brock Purdy, Fred Warner and the rest of the 49ers totally understand and recognize it now. At least they don’t have to spend extra time or energy trying to deny or disprove it.
It’s early October, with months to go in this long regular season, but this is already a year from hell for the 49ers.
Or really, it’s been an accumulation of miniature hells, going from the summer contract tensions to Christian McCaffrey’s lingering injury to the Week 3 collapse against the Rams to a spree of new injuries to some general defensive slippage to Sunday’s excruciating trip through broiling purgatory.
The 49ers had a 23-10 halftime lead over the Cardinals. They could’ve closed this game out 10 different ways. They could’ve ended the day smiling, with a big game Thursday night in Seattle coming up. But the 49ers instead trudged off the field as 24-23 losers, looking just as baffled and burned as the Levi’s Stadium fans who stuck around through the sun-roasted festivities.
Afterward, the 49ers’ leaders didn’t make elaborate excuses or pound the table with false exhortations. They spoke plainly. They didn’t make battle cries. Mostly, they sounded like people who know they’ve put themselves into the inferno and realize it’s going to take a lot of work to climb out.
“I’m extremely frustrated,” Shanahan said of his 2-3 team.
“Yeah, I’m concerned, because we want to win football games,” Trent Williams said. “We’ve got goals. But there’s no need to panic. We’re going to figure it out.”
“We haven’t won those gritty little games yet,” George Kittle said. “We just haven’t done that.”
Of course, the season is not lost. It’s still early. If they recover quickly this week and beat the 3-2 Seahawks on Thursday, the 49ers will jump into a tie for first place in the NFC West. The 49ers have struggled in recent Septembers and Octobers and rallied late to make it deep into the playoffs. It’s also increasingly possible that a bunch of mediocre teams are going to make the NFC postseason this time around.
But something feels different about the losses to the Rams and Cardinals. The games can be overcome, but the ways in which the 49ers have crumbled can’t be ignored. This is not how a good team — or a team that can work its way there — plays at any point of the season.
On Sunday, Purdy had a pass tipped for an interception at a key moment in the third quarter and threw another INT in the final seconds, when he was hit as he threw. Jordan Mason lost a fumble deep in Arizona territory when the 49ers were driving for a game-sealing score. Kicker Jake Moody was knocked out of the game when poor kick coverage forced him to make a saving tackle — which changed the way the 49ers’ offense could play. And the 49ers’ defense couldn’t stop Kyler Murray and James Conner in the fourth quarter when one stop would’ve won the game.
Good teams win that game every time. The 49ers are not a good team right now. They are mistake-prone. They fold late. They’ve been a good team for several years, and they’ve won almost every one of these kinds of games under Shanahan. But now they’ve lost a few already this season.
“The standard here, man, is excellence,” Purdy said. “And what we’ve proven the last couple years is the standard we can play at. That’s what we’re trying to get to. But every year’s different, just the team, the chemistry, and getting guys together.
“It’s early in the season. We’re still trying to find our true identity as a team. We’re getting there. It’s a couple plays and a couple drives away from jelling and glueing together. But I’m confident that we’ll find it.”
There are some brighter signs, of course. Brandon Aiyuk, who missed all of training camp due to his contract tussle, looked like his old, galloping self Sunday, catching eight passes for 147 yards after totaling just 167 yards in the previous four games. And at some point in the next month or so, the 49ers should get McCaffrey back to rev up their faltering Red Zone offense (only one TD in six trips Sunday). And after that, Dre Greenlaw should be back flying around on defense.
Also, the 49ers’ defense doesn’t look undertalented or overmatched. It just looks a little incomplete; new coordinator Nick Sorensen needs to make an adjustment or two to meet this moment.
“Finishing and playing complementary football is definitely something we’ve been good at throughout the years,” Nick Bosa said. “We’ve gotta stop losing games, but I haven’t lost any confidence.”
The 49ers have their recent history to count on. They have great players. They have Shanahan’s game planning and motivational push. If they go on a winning streak starting Thursday, much of this early-season drama will be just part of the learning curve for 2024, the way it was in 2022, when they went on a 10-game winning streak to close out the season after an uncertain start.
“I don’t think you find exactly who you are until you go through hard times,” Fred Warner said. “And we’re obviously going through the hardest time right now. And we’ll see how we respond.”
Football seasons are not sprints. The 49ers are going to need to be at speed for the deeper laps.
“The team that you look like in September and October will be significantly different than November and December,” Kittle said.
But you can never bank on saving your season in the winter. You might suffer some more key injuries. You might see your rivals get hot, too. You can certainly rally back after you blow games early in the season, but you can never get them back.
And if the 49ers fall a victory or two short of home-field advantage in the first round and have to fly to Minnesota or Green Bay in January, or if they are in a desperate race to make the playoffs at all, they will be looking back to this kind of game.
And not just that. They will be looking back at Aiyuk’s slow start, McCaffrey’s long absence, the broken plays on defense, the special-teams miscues, the offensive stall outs and the collapses against the Rams and Cardinals. If the 49ers keep playing like this, there will be more of these losses, too.
If the 49ers fall short this season, these terrible, hellish losses won’t be excuses for missing their goals. They’ll be the reason for it.