Though almost everything from Day 1 of this season has felt wildly unstable and insecure for the 49ers, the biggest things really aren’t in that much flux heading into 2025.

Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch will almost certainly continue running the team. Brock Purdy, presuming a long-term deal landing at some point this spring, will remain the quarterback for the foreseeable future, with George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey, and Trent Williams (if he chooses to play another season) alongside him in the offensive huddle. Fred Warner, Nick Bosa, and Deommodore Lenoir will still be the heart of the defense next season.

But after that? Though Shanahan and Lynch are logically still focused on the remaining weeks of this season, you can feel some of what’s in the air for 2025. Obviously, they’re 6-9 and have been out of the realistic playoff race for more than a month. They’ve had some time to think about changes. They must make changes — changes by attrition, changes out of necessity, and a few key course changes for a regime that will be heading into its ninth season, still without a Super Bowl trophy.

But at this later moment in this mostly successful era, the 49ers face a two-way quandary: Too much change now might diminish and possibly eliminate most of what made them good in the first place; but too little change might push everything about this era’s relevant days into the past tense.

Let’s take a look at the major names and issues that need to be addressed quickly and where it seems to be headed:

Nick Sorensen will likely be back as defensive coordinator

Sorensen’s hold on this job has been getting stronger as the weeks have gone on and the 49ers’ defense has tightened things up. Has everything been great? Not at all, especially in the shaky first few months for the rookie DC. But lately, the 49ers’ leaders have pointed out that things looked a lot better when Dre Greenlaw made it briefly back and with Talanoa Hufanga helping run the secondary.

The 49ers are now giving up an average of only 5.1 yards per play this season, which ranks fourth in the league and is comparable both to last year under Wilks (with a healthier squad) and the 2019 heyday of this defense under Robert Saleh.

Sorensen, who has come up through the 49ers’ ranks, also has recently gotten the public backing from Warner and Bosa that Wilks was not getting at this time last season. Maybe even more to the point, several the 49ers’ leaders compare Sorensen now to Saleh in his early tenure as DC and to DeMeco Ryans in his first DC year. And Saleh and Ryans are beloved inside 49ers HQ.

Is assistant head coach Brandon Staley an option for next season? I haven’t heard anything like that all season. Could Shanahan try to hire Saleh back now that he’s unemployed? My sense is that neither man seems entirely primed for a redo. Could Shanahan check back with Jeff Ulbrich, his first DC choice last off-season before the Jets blocked the lateral move? Maybe. There could be other options, too. But my sense is that Shanahan and Lynch feel that Sorensen grew on the job this season and will only get better into the future.

Jake Moody is not likely to be the kicker in 2025

Moody’s scholarship, which started when the 49ers stunningly drafted him in the third round in 2023, should expire once the 49ers pack things up from Glendale, Ariz., after their regular-season finale, and that might be it for him as the 49ers’ kicker.

Maybe Moody will turn into a very good NFL kicker in the future — on another team. The 49ers used a third-round pick on him last year because he’s an immense talent. He’s one of the best practice kickers I’ve ever seen. But in games over these two seasons, Moody’s been the definition of unreliable. Though Shanahan gave him another vote of confidence on Thursday, I just don’t see how Shanahan can keep sending him out there for pressure kicks in 2025.

Deebo Samuel’s sideline eruption after Moody’s three misses in Tampa Bay earlier this season wasn’t pretty — but it also was a sign of growing team-wide frustration in Moody. And that certainly hasn’t gone away.

There was the 41-yard miss on Sunday in Miami, which seemed to push Shanahan to the brink after he’s been relentlessly positive about Moody for most of two years. Moody is now 9 for 16 on field-goal tries from 40 yards and longer this season, well below average among quality NFL kickers. In comparison, when Moody was sidelined with an ankle injury, the 49ers watched two replacements, Anders Carlson and Matthew Wright, combine to go 5 for 5 from 40-plus.

I’ve been generally skeptical of Moody since he started missing kicks in the 2023 preseason, but what really stuck out for me were the two shanked kickoffs in the Bears game last month — they didn’t travel past the Chicago 20-yard line in the air, which meant that the Bears automatically got the ball at the 40. Good kickers don’t do that. Even mediocre kickers don’t do that. Two of them! One of those short drives resulted in the Bear’s first TD. Against a competent opponent, that really might’ve mattered.

At the least, the 49ers need to bring some veterans in and stage a kicking contest in the spring and maybe into training camp next season. But Moody is great in those camps. He only starts messing up in games. So I’m not sure the 49ers should make this about a camp competition. I think they should release Moody after the season and start anew at this position. But it sounds like Shanahan and Lynch won’t do that. I think it’s delaying the inevitable.

More special teams reckonings

It’s not all coach Brian Schneider’s fault. The players assigned to the special teams have responsibility for all the mistakes, turnovers, failed assignments, and yardage lost to terrible coverage and terrible returns this season. Shanahan has responsibility, too, because he clearly doesn’t care about special teams and it shows.

But like with Moody, I don’t know how Shanahan can look his locker-room leaders in the eyes and tell them he’s keep Schneider on staff after everything that’s happened this season.

Another big adjustment that likely needs to happen: Shanahan has to try to pretend he cares a little bit about the personnel and strategies on special teams. He has to ask more of them than just not screw up his offense and defense. Could he — dare I say? — get involved with scheming up a fake punt?

The franchises with the best special teams play tend to be run by head coaches who love the details of the kicking game. That will never be Shanahan. But unless he starts letting his players and coaches know that he’ll be checking in on them and is supporting them, I don’t know if it matters who the special teams coach really is.

Alter the way they stock the offensive line

I’ll get into this much more deeply once the season is over, but if there’s a general throughline for the 49ers’ failures this season beyond the horrible special teams, it’s that they could never run the ball consistently. Obviously, it was going to be tougher this season with McCaffrey out so much, Elijah Mitchell out the whole time, and other running back injuries. But Shanahan has put together dominant running games before without All-Pro runners. It just didn’t happen this season because the offensive line couldn’t create openings consistently. How many times early in the season did the 49ers get into the red zone and immediately watch the middle of the offensive line get blown up on a run for no yards on first-and-10 on their way to a field-goal try? Too many times.

Shanahan sets up his entire game plan with the idea that his running game will establish control. It opens up the play-action game. It keeps his defense fresh. It’s everything. And after the 49ers got out-rushed 166-81 by Miami on Sunday, they’ve now been outrushed in eight games this season. For a majority of this season, the 49ers have been the lesser running team. That stat must drive Shanahan crazy.

If that doesn’t change, the 49ers’ 2025 season might look a lot like 2024.

Some veterans will be exiting, some will be inexpensive enough to remain

It seems that Javon Hargrave will likely be released this off-season. And Charvarius Ward likely won’t be re-signed. That’s normal attrition. There probably will be one or two more veteran departures, though maybe not as many as once presumed.

The 49ers will be facing a cash crunch with the Purdy deal coming and the biggest salaries for Bosa and others coming due. Under usual circumstances, they probably would’ve had to pare down their list of high-earning stars going into next season. But what happens when most of the market for their stars is depressed by such a lousy, injury-plagued season?

I think Greenlaw probably will be back on a moderate, short-term deal — to heal up, get his value back up, and remain alongside Warner. I think Hufanga might be back, too, in a similar short-term deal, though that one might get tricky because the 49ers have two young safeties who have gotten a ton of playing time this season.

So what about Deebo?

The 49ers designed their last contract with Samuel in a way that made it relatively easy to trade or release him this coming off-season. That was all part of the thorny negotiations back in the spring and summer of 2022. The 49ers weren’t sure his style of play would wear too well over time and Deebo wasn’t thrilled when the 49ers made that very clear.

But that doesn’t mean there’s a guaranteed divorce coming in March. First of all, the 49ers are not likely getting much of anything back in a trade for Deebo. Cross that option off, unless it’s mostly a salary dump. Secondly, if they cut Deebo, the 49ers would take a $10.7 million dead-cap hit — if he’s designated as a post-June 1 release. That would save them $5.2 million in real dollars but only $5.3 million on the cap. And they wouldn’t have Deebo, who has had a poor season but remains one of Shanahan’s favorite players and showed again on Sunday that he’s capable of significant things at least once in a while.

So why not just keep Deebo at his $16 million cap number rather than going through all that? Or the 49ers can even reduce that number — if Deebo is agreeable — by negotiating an extension to spread the hit into later years by guaranteeing a little bit of money past this season. If Deebo was coming off of a great season, he would never agree to a pay cut. But now, at 28, realizing where his market is, I think Deebo would listen. And I think Shanahan and Lynch would be wise to figure out how to keep him around.

In 2025, Deebo might still do good things. It’s possible. But also, he’d be insurance for a potential slow Brandon Aiyuk comeback from his ACL injury, insurance for more McCaffrey issues, and insurance in case Ricky Pearsall and Jacob Cowing aren’t ready to break out next season. Insurance is good.

If there’s anything the 49ers have learned from this season, it’s that you can run out of good players very swiftly. You can never have too many. And after a bad season for everybody, sometimes the prices are reduced just enough to run them back out there for one more season.