Let’s move past the 49ers’ 2024 doom cycle for a bit. Let’s examine the potential aftermath of this tense and likely inadequate season.
First, a stipulation: The 5-5 49ers are still in the NFC West and conference wild-card races and will stay mathematically alive no matter what happens the next two weeks in Green Bay and Buffalo.
However, with dire warnings rippling throughout the franchise, this might be the best time to ask three big questions that will remain significant no matter what happens the rest of the way.
What do the 49ers actually do well? Is that enough to be highly competitive into 2025? And are the right people in place — in leadership and on the roster — to fix the problem areas and make sure things go smoother in the future?
If the 49ers play their best game of the season and trounce the Packers on Sunday at Lambeau Field, maybe this column looks pretty stupid. But if the 49ers lose Sunday, with that night game in Buffalo coming up, the harsh conclusions will be due almost immediately.
I’m giving myself an early start. But jumping ahead doesn’t mean jumping to rash conclusions. That’s another reason I want to do this now — to keep things in perspective before the most emotional and irrational elements come fully into play.
Presuming the 49ers play hard to the finish line but either miss the playoffs or get bounced quickly, here’s how I think the big decisions will land.
Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch aren’t going anywhere
It’s the biggest question for frustrated 49ers fans and also the easiest one to address. Unless there’s a complete December collapse or there’s been secret infighting, I can’t imagine that Jed York is planning to move on from the most stable and successful leadership team he’s ever had after a season that was throttled by major injuries. An owner who’s previously hired and fired Trent Baalke, Terry Donahue, Dennis Erickson, Mike Singletary, Chip Kelly, and Jim Tomsula would be wise to avoid starting up the mediocrity merry-go-round again.
Has Shanahan been a perfect coach this season and over the entire run? No. He can be stubborn about the plays he calls and the players he prefers. But he didn’t become one of the most respected minds in the game because he’s a vacillator. His structure works, in part, because of how much he believes it will work. If you force him to draw up more imaginative plays or become actually interested in special teams, you wouldn’t have the singular mind that put together a team that won 10 in a row to finish the 2022 regular season and rallied past Detroit in last season’s NFC Championship Game. It’s one package.
In a lot of ways, I’m reminded of Jim Harbaugh during his four seasons with the 49ers and afterward. He’s not a perfect coach, either. He has a way of doing things, and it works largely because he will not contemplate doing it differently. Harbaugh was fired because he battled with Baalke, exhausted York, and came up short in the Super Bowl. Then it took Harbaugh nine years after leaving the 49ers to win a title with Michigan. But he was always on his way to a championship, because he wasn’t going to compromise. And he might get another one with the Chargers within a few years.
When the 49ers fired Harbaugh, they lost everything he’d built for them. And if the 49ers move on from Shanahan, he’d be irreplaceable in a similar way. They’d probably have to fire Lynch, too. And they might have to untie themselves from Brock Purdy, Trent Williams, Deebo Samuel, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, Fred Warner, and maybe Nick Bosa —which doesn’t seem like the way you improve anything.
Like Harbaugh, Shanahan keeps giving his teams the chance to win championships. Like Harbaugh, Shanahan has suffered some of the toughest losses the 49ers have ever endured. And, like Harbaugh did just last January, I think Shanahan will get all the way there at some point. The 49ers have to keep going with Shanahan and Lynch, and they will. At least for another season.
There will be adjustments to Shanahan’s coaching staff
One way this could blow up is if York asks for specific changes to Shanahan’s staff this offseason, and the head coach refuses. But I don’t see that happening. Though Shanahan rarely gives clear hints about his thinking on this topic, I’ve got to believe by this offseason he’ll be as ready as anyone to move on from, in particular, special teams coach Brian Schneider.
I’m not sure about defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen, whose unit has been so-so in his first season in charge. But Sorensen got the promotion because the top candidates weren’t available last offseason. If Robert Saleh is interested in returning to the 49ers now that he doesn’t have a job or if Jeff Ulbrich isn’t retained by the Jets, a DC switch would feel pretty natural.
The 49ers’ staff works best when there are one or two major personalities under Shanahan who have the credibility to debate him and maybe change his mind at times — the way Saleh did as DC and Mike McDaniel did on the offensive staff before both left for head-coaching jobs. I think DeMeco Ryans had the clout to do this, too, when he was DC. Maybe Shanahan brought in Brandon Staley for this purpose, but it doesn’t seem like it happened that way. I don’t think the 2024 staff has that guy, and it shows.
Invest more in the offensive line
Other than spending on Williams (in draft picks to acquire him and in the money they’re paying him), Shanahan and Lynch have bet that offensive line is the one position that doesn’t need a constant influx of top-tier talent.
And they’ve gotten to two Super Bowls this way. But after seven years, there’s an OL talent atrophy that’s hard to ignore. Just look at Shanahan’s cherished running game: The 49ers are averaging 147.8 rushing yards a game, seventh in the league. But if you take away Purdy’s 26.7 rushing yards per game — which mostly have come on called pass plays and are way up from his runs last season — the 49ers are in the middle of the pack. Add in the O line’s struggles to protect Purdy in the passing game and those critical penalties, and that’s a massive problem area.
Most glaringly, the 49ers just can’t run in the Red Zone. Purdy’s four rushing touchdowns lead the team because the 49ers have only 10 total in 10 games. Last season they had 27 rushing TDs — just two from Purdy and 14 from McCaffrey by himself.
The 49ers used the 86th pick in April to draft Dominick Puni, and I don’t know where that line would be without him this season. They need two or three more hits like that — particularly at center and right tackle. They’d also better have a succession plan for Williams at some point. It would be wildly out of character but perhaps just right if Shanahan and Lynch spent multiple top-100 picks next April to address all of this.
It might be even more essential to sign Purdy to a huge extension
He’s not Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, or Justin Herbert. Some days he doesn’t even look like a top-20 quarterback. But how far would the 49ers fall if they didn’t have Purdy locked in for the long term? Possibly Raiders, Giants, and Titans far.
Purdy’s lost Brandon Aiyuk for the season. He didn’t have McCaffrey for the first eight games. He’s had Kittle in and out. His offensive line has been iffy. And yet, even in what we can all agree hasn’t been an impressive individual campaign, Purdy is sixth in the league in passing yards, 14th in passer rating, sixth in QBR (which factors in scrambles and situational play), and third in yards per pass attempt. That’s a pretty good QB baseline.
If anything, I believe Purdy is more important to the 49ers’ future than he’s ever been. What’s the price tag going to be next spring? Impossible to know, but I don’t think he’s destined to reset the QB market. As a comp, I’ve pointed to the Jalen Hurts situation before the 2023 season. Hurts, like Purdy, isn’t a classic pocket passer but, also like Purdy, won a lot of games early in his career. Hurts got enormous money from the Eagles ($179 million guaranteed) but did not seek to beat all other QB contracts. Could Purdy do something similar — not try to top Dak Prescott’s $60-million-a-year recent reset and come in closer to Tua Tagovailoa’s $53 million or Hurts’ $51 million per year? Maybe. I think there’s a deal to be done between Purdy and the 49ers.
And oh, yeah: The last time the 49ers had a void at QB, they traded three first-round picks to acquire Trey Lance. And there is nobody in this organization who wants a repeat that experience.
But after Purdy’s deal is finalized, the coffers might run dry
The pragmatic extension agreements with Deommodore Lenoir and Jauan Jennings over the last few months felt like the last deals of the old payroll era snuck in just under the wire. With Purdy’s deal looming, anybody who hasn’t gotten a new deal recently probably won’t get one in the offseason, which means pending free agents Charvarius Ward, Aaron Banks, and a few others probably are spending their last months on this roster. It’s also likely that some older, high-paid players are destined to be off-loaded in March.
There’s already been a necessary playing-time tilt to younger players, thanks to almost the entire 2024 draft class. They need another group like that in 2025 and another in ’26. That’s how worn-down rosters get refreshed after repeated long trips to the postseason. That’s what gives coach/GM regimes extra time. And that’s what Harbaugh was never granted.
The 49ers were always going to have to budget for the Purdy deal. That’ll get accelerated if they miss the playoffs this season. York was willing to hand out huge guarantees to pay the stars who brought him to multiple Super Bowls and to add more big salaries if it gave the team a better shot at winning the thing. But, in the wake of a disappointing campaign, that kind of largesse almost certainly will disappear. The 2025 49ers likely will have younger players, fewer stars, and lower salaries. They will be less talented on paper. That doesn’t mean they can’t win a lot of games. But the days of a virtual Pro Bowl roster packed into the home locker room at Levi’s Stadium are probably gone.