The 2025 49ers will be different than the 2024 49ers because nobody in this organization wants to experience anything like that ever again. Also: The 2025 49ers will be different in key ways than the 2024, 2023, 2022, and all recent versions of the 49ers because it’s about time.
If you don’t evolve, you get left far behind. The 49ers have to get to evolving.
Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch weren’t quite saying it that way at Wednesday’s end-of-season news conference. They’re the same guys who sat up at the podium for seven previous iterations of this and are heading into their ninth season in charge of this team. They’ll presumably be the same guys who’ll sit up there next January or February, saying some similar things about many of the same players. They’re the personification of 49ers continuity and solidarity, which are not tiny things in an increasingly chaotic league and world.
And Shanahan and Lynch are still reeling a bit from the 6-11 season and three late losses early in the campaign that doomed everything.
“This year was most disappointing to me because regardless of injuries, I felt like we should’ve been a playoff team,” Shanahan said. “And then you never know what happens in there.”
But there’s been an undercurrent over the last few months that carried into Shanahan and Lynch’s mood and words on Wednesday. First and most bluntly, Shanahan explained that the firing of defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen this week was a necessary change simply because there were better options out there. He also fired special teams coordinator Brian Schneider and announced that offensive assistant Klay Kubiak will get the offensive coordinator title (but Shanahan will continue calling plays).
More generally, there’s an overall sense the 49ers need to be refreshed, recast, and rethought. The roster needs more young players, the way Lynch and his staff partially restocked the roster with a very good 2024 draft. Shanahan’s staff could use some different kinds of thinkers. Now, if he brings back Robert Saleh as the DC, that would be returning to the first years of this run. But it’s a change, too: I don’t think Shanahan has had many assistants challenge him the last few years; and I know that Saleh wasn’t too shy about that in his time here. It makes for better coaching. It makes for more creativity. And if Shanahan hires Jeff Ulbrich, that would definitely be a different kind of energy.
I know Shanahan is thinking this way because he jumped to answer when I asked if, after their five-year run from 2019-2023 that included two Super Bowl trips and four berths in the NFC Championship Game, he and Lynch feel like things need to shift a bit in their organization.
“Yeah, I think it shifted in that time, also,” Shanahan said. “Going to the Super Bowl in ’19 — we had a rookie receiver and a veteran receiver, in Deebo [Samuel] and Emmanuel [Sanders]. The next time we went, we had [Brandon Aiyuk]. First time we had a different quarterback. Four years later, it’s Brock [Purdy]. I think we did have different guys on defense. …
“I think we have already done that. And I think we’ve gotta do it again, without a doubt. I think when you do come up short like we did Feb. 11 last year, I do think in the off-season when you know how close that could’ve been and it just comes down to a couple plays, and everything you think about is how to make that up, ’cause you do believe you can do that again.”
The 49ers don’t want to make wholesale changes, naturally. They have a lot of good players. But many of them are older, many of them got hurt, some of them didn’t play so great, and reinforcements are necessary, particularly on the offensive and defensive lines.
How will things change in 2025? I think the shift has been happening for a while now, but was a bit disguised by all the offensive injuries and frustrations last season. It’s Purdy’s team now. He didn’t play tremendously, either, but he helped hold that offense together. Increasingly, he’s helping lead the entire team, too. They’ll go as far as he can take them, presuming, of course, that a long-term extension is completed well before the start of spring OTAs.
“Brock is the leader of our team,” Shanahan said. “I’ve loved these three years with Brock. I plan on being with Brock here for the time I’m here. Brock’s been a stud. … Capable of winning a Super Bowl with him. Just almost did.”
Or, as Lynch put it when asked if it’s important to get Purdy signed as soon as possible: “I think what we know about Brock is he’s our guy. We have interest in Brock being around here for a long, long time.”
If you connect the dots to future personnel decisions, it’s not hard to guess that Shanahan and Lynch will have an increased desire to invest in the offensive line to make sure that Purdy (presumably with more than $100 million in guaranteed money) is given every chance to shine in 2025 and far beyond that. The 49ers could use the 11th pick in next April’s draft on the best tackle available. They could spend some money on the best offensive lineman. They could sign several of them.
And they’ll hope that the new coordinator puts Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, Deommodore Lenoir, and the other defensive stalwarts in the right positions next season. The 49ers slipped badly under Sorensen, which cost him his job. But turning back into one of the NFL’s top-10 defenses would change a lot of things.
Meanwhile, Shanahan also looked and sounded livelier in this presser than he did last year, which is not surprising since Shanahan didn’t grind through a long postseason and take an agonizing loss in the Super Bowl right before showing up to the podium this time.
On Wednesday, he talked enthusiastically about the long 14-week span between now and their first spring sessions and said he’s sure everybody will be more than ready to start everything by then.
So they’re disappointed that they’re not in the middle of playoff game planning right now, but maybe the 49ers can take some advantage of the extra time this off-season. Shanahan referenced that when I asked why he’s had to fire DCs in back-to-back years.
“I don’t believe anything went wrong in the process,” Shanahan said. “I’ll tell you what, I think it’s a more opportunistic or easier process talking about it right now, whatever the date is today. A little bit harder in February, which the last two [DC searches] were in.”
Shanahan sounded fully energized when he said this. He looked like he was ready to spring into action to make sure 2025 is nothing like 2024 for the 49ers. He’s the same guy he was in 2017, when he was hired to run this team, but he’s evolved, too. And this off-season, the 49ers will change in pretty important ways. It’s already started.
