It almost feels intentional at this late stage in the free-agency carnival, like the 49ers are performing an extended bit of intellectual whimsy to prove a ludicrous point. They’re Andy Kaufman egging on the audience. They’re a wrestling heel making an exaggerated mockery of everything.
Not funny ha-ha, but funny what-the-heck-are-you-doing?
At some point, knowing that the 49ers are run by smart people who are unlikely to have wholly lost the plot, I have to believe they’re adhering to some version of a reasonable plan. I have to think the 49ers aren’t purposely tanking the 2025 season just to save money and to prove that they can do it in full view of their entire fan base. I can’t imagine how they’d explain any of this to their locker room, their sponsors, and their most passionate supporters.
Until absolutely proven otherwise, I’ll guess that Jed York and his top lieutenants still have a way to replace most of the starters they’ve sent away, to maintain a roster that is at least theoretically comparable to the ones they fielded over the past five years, and to explain why they wouldn’t offer market rates for any of the other top free agents. I’ll assume that they are not making this the worst March in recent 49ers history all on purpose.
But if the simplest explanation is usually the best one, and if the 49ers have decided that they’re mostly done paying for the best players of this era, maybe the era is really over.
Stinginess as a strategy
Taken move by move, I won’t argue with the 49ers’ clear operating thesis this offseason. They went 6-11 last season with a very expensive roster full of veterans who got hurt or performed poorly or both. Getting younger and cheaper makes sense. It doesn’t have to destroy a team’s trajectory. The Rams cleared out a host of overvalued veterans over the past few years and jumped back into the playoffs last season.
The 49ers, it’s clear now, were always set to discard Deebo Samuel, Javon Hargrave, and Kyle Juszczyk this spring. They were always going to let Charvarius Ward, Talanoa Hufanga, Aaron Banks, and Elijah Mitchell walk as free agents. They were never going to bid at the top of the market for outside players. That’s not why these last few days have been so shocking. No, the stunning part has been the 49ers going even further — releasing Leonard Floyd and Maliek Collins even though they were among the healthiest players last year; not bidding up on Dre Greenlaw, one of the most popular players in the locker room; and not bringing in a single new starter through the first two waves of the signing period.
The 49ers’ mindset isn’t surprising. Again, more often than not, the hottest free-agent deals end up being the worst ones pretty quickly. Many times, stinginess as a limited strategy isn’t a terrible idea. And if this is all a magnificent sleight of hand for the 49ers to free up enough cash and cap room to acquire star defensive end Trey Hendrickson from the Bengals, then I will tip my hat to York and his executives. I very much doubt it will happen that way, however.
Because right now, this feels like a purge, not a strategy. The 49ers are an enormously profitable enterprise. There’s little chance the Yorks are running out of money. They’re just choosing to cut back this season after spending near the top of the league the past few years. That’s certainly their right. But it’s absolutely fair for fans and players to question why this is happening and why so many other teams — teams the 49ers will play this season — are spending so much more than the 49ers.
How far is this going to go? I’ve heard that talks have started cordially between Purdy and the 49ers on his new extension, but what if the 49ers’ money people decide that they can either go 7-10 with him or 5-12 without him this season, so why compromise? What if that negotiation runs up against the 49ers’ hard line? Where is this headed?
More immediately: The 49ers just brought back defensive coordinator Robert Saleh to much fanfare and a top-of-market salary … to now coach a roster of question marks. Did Saleh know this coming in? To think about how much Shanahan and Lynch have always valued the defensive line and how much they’ve spent to stock it with top talent over the years — then compare it to the current depth chart … YIKES.
Did Shanahan and Lynch know about the extent of this?
You can’t totally avoid big salary bets in sports. You can’t always be coldly logical. If you make a rational financial decision on every single personnel decision, you’ll probably end up as the most rational 7-10 team in the league every year.
And the 49ers were in the Super Bowl — ahead in the Super Bowl — less than 14 months ago. They had a talented roster that failed last year. They have a much less talented roster now than they did a few days ago.
Until and unless we hear otherwise from Shanahan or Lynch — or from their associates talking to the media — I’ll presume that both men are generally on board with this. Or at least most of this. Or maybe the 49ers’ money people placated Shanahan by signing 2021 draft darling Mac Jones on Wednesday? (I kid! Or do I?)
My working premise is that the 49ers went into this offseason with a strong commitment to cutting down their cash outlay this season and felt like they could do it and still keep most of their roster together. But then — again, this is just my theory, to try to make sense of this — something might’ve happened over the first few days of free agency that triggered this onslaught.
I’m not sure how else you can explain cutting Floyd before losing out on Joey Bosa. Or cutting Collins just to save his salary. (The 49ers took dead-cap hits on both players but saved cash. This is all about cash.) That Floyd and Collins (and Hargrave) were scooped up for big dollars almost immediately after they hit the waiver wire makes the 49ers’ decisions even more confusing. They were valuable players. The 49ers ate money rather than keep them on the roster. And after those cuts, the 49ers now have more than $86 million in dead money on this year’s cap, according to the Associated Press’ Josh Dubow, and have an additional $21.5 million in dead money on their 2026 cap. They’re saving money. They’re also drawing dead at several important positions.
If they’ve gone this far, could the 49ers just strip the payroll all the way down by subtracting Nick Bosa, Brandon Aiyuk, Williams, McCaffrey, and others? What’s the point of paying those guys if you might be headed toward a mediocre season, anyway?
I can’t answer those questions right now. In the very recent past, I could’ve easily answered that the 49ers are intent on keeping every good player. As Lynch said after the season when asked about Deebo, “We’re not in the business of letting good players out of here.” But Deebo was traded for a fifth-round pick a few weeks after that statement. They could trade Aiyuk at any point — less than a year after signing him to a $30 million-a-year deal. A bunch of others are gone, too.
The 49ers used to celebrate these kinds of players. They used to accept the going rate for accumulating them. And over a very dramatic few weeks, it’s all been flipped. Now the 49ers can’t get away quick enough from many of their better guys. I wonder how quickly they’re moving away from their better days, too.