Jed York is doubling, tripling, quadrupling, and $404-million-ing down on Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch heading into the duo’s ninth season with the 49ers — which is maybe not something you would’ve expected after last season’s 6-11 collapse.
It was probably necessary, though, given the lifespan of this administration and the architecture of this top-heavy roster. It was time to either reaffirm vows or slowly start to walk away from one another.
And York, through his checkbook and in other ways this offseason, has once again gone all-in on Lynch and Shanahan, their belief system, and the way they personify the 49ers of this era.
It’s the right move. It’s not one I necessarily could’ve predicted from an owner who was upset about the 2024 results and the decisions that partially led to it, but I also know that York understands how much the 49ers have gained from the stability and coherence of this era.
And York clearly and wisely isn’t curious at all about what the 49ers would be like without Shanahan and Lynch. Or maybe York just has too many vivid memories of the hollow era between Jim Harbaugh’s departure and Shanahan and Lynch’s arrival.
If you like the leaders you’ve got, you trust them. You bet on them. And you bet on the players they like.
There is no way York would’ve signed Brock Purdy — a quarterback uniquely matched with Shanahan’s system and specifications — to his new, five-year, $265-million extension through 2030 if the owner wasn’t also committed to keeping Shanahan around all that time.
It’s a pot commitment. Purdy is worth $53 million a year — with a $100 million true guarantee — almost singularly if he’s coached by Shanahan. And Shanahan is worth upward of the $15 million a year he’s making almost only if he has a QB who can operate his system with the highest efficiency.
The 49ers couldn’t wait around on this one. Purdy deserved a new deal. Shanahan and Lynch needed to know if York was behind Purdy (and them) for the long term. And York and his financial people made the clear call on their coach/QB fusion at least for several more years, exactly when they had to make it.
Add George Kittle’s new four-year, $76.4-million extension through 2029 and Fred Warner’s new deal — struck a few days ago — for three more years and $63 million (also through 2029), and that’s $404.4 million in contracted long-term cash the 49ers have doled out in just a few weeks.
An owner who questions his current leadership doesn’t usually do stuff like this. An owner who thinks the team is headed in the wrong direction and is eyeing a potential total detonation doesn’t do anything like this.
This is the behavior of an owner who still believes in the coach and general manager who delivered two Super Bowl berths (but no championships) and four trips to the NFC Championship Game (but also four non-playoff seasons).
And even if York isn’t 100% thrilled with everything that Shanahan, Lynch, and Purdy have done over the past few seasons, I’m pretty sure he understands how hard it’d be to properly replace any of them.
If York fires Shanahan and Lynch after this season, what happens then? The market price for a top head-coaching candidate is the five-year, $65-million deal Ben Johnson recently got from the Bears, with no guarantee he can do this job at a high level. And if Shanahan ever hit the market, he’d have 10 offers in about 10 minutes (even possibly from the Bears, if they could get out of the Johnson deal).
If the 49ers’ top execs ever wanted to move on from Purdy, the contract they just finalized would preclude that for a couple of years. But even before entering that agreement, the 49ers probably tried to imagine what they’d do at QB if they didn’t land a deal with Purdy.
So it’d be … an aging Kirk Cousins? I don’t think even Shanahan, Cousins’ all-time No. 1 fan, would want that anymore. Mac Jones as QB1? Please. Dial up the Aaron Rodgers Experience? What’s Nick Mullens up to these days? Trey Lance?
No, the idea of new version of the 2015 Jim Tomsula/Blaine Gabbert/Trent Baalke trio probably was enough to warn York and everybody else from this path.
This is why it makes sense to pledge allegiance to Shanahan, Lynch, Purdy, Kittle, and Warner (and a few others who didn’t get new deals) as the once and future franchise foundations. The 49ers could do worse. They have done worse. A lot worse.
Naturally, there are always potential disruptions. If the 49ers get hit with the same kind of injury wave that destroyed 2024, things almost certainly will get a little tense. Or if Purdy falters. Or if the 2025 defensive draft choices can’t fill the spots left open by the 49ers’ big spring purge of veterans.
The old joke around the NFL is that every administration is just a three-game losing streak away from jeopardy, and Shanahan and Lynch, this deep into their tenures, surely aren’t immune from that. Also, if Shanahan and Lynch ever start to split apart, that would be a sure sign of looming changes.
But Shanahan and Lynch remain as bonded as ever — in fact, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer reported that they were on a golf excursion together last week when the Purdy deal was getting finalized. The coach and GM are as fixed in place and joined together as any leadership duo in the league (that hasn’t won a Super Bowl).
Not that everything’s the same this season, of course. The offseason payroll cleansing has thinned out the 49ers’ depth chart in several key areas; there is no guarantee that all or even most of their recent draft choices can step into those voids. Even if the rookies look like they’re ready for significant NFL action right away, several of them could get hurt — as is normal for rookies — or other untested players could flounder in other ways.
We know that Shanahan and Lynch took an urgent flight out to visit Dre Greenlaw in Texas to try to salvage those negotiations but lost him just like they lost Talanoa Hufanga, Jaylon Moore, Charvarius Ward, and others. We know that there were solid reasons the 49ers discarded Deebo Samuel, Javon Hargrave, Leonard Floyd, Maliek Collins, and others, but also that all of them quickly found other NFL homes, because they still have value in this league. Just not enough value for the 49ers to want to pay them.
But I haven’t heard a whisper of public or private complaining from Shanahan and Lynch about the cuts to the middle of their roster. I don’t think they loved it, but they’re not muttering about it. Which gives us even more indication that things are OK inside the halls of 49ers HQ.
It’s no Pollyanna paradise. Even with this incredibly easy upcoming schedule, team officials know there will be issues. But the realism is part of the stability.
You can almost imagine York and his money people coming to a tacit understanding with Lynch and Shanahan at the start of this offseason. The 49ers obviously had a plan to dump a bunch of the veterans they believed were overpaid. But — so my theory goes — to get Shanahan and Lynch to sign off on the cuts, there might’ve been a promise to negotiate fairly and swiftly with the players who had earned new deals.
Nobody wanted a repeat of the prolonged Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams negotiations last summer or the Nick Bosa negotiations the year before that. So if this was all part of a plan to cut spending early in the offseason so they’d be freer and faster to spend later on … that’s very workable. The 49ers don’t have an elite roster in 2025, but they have a plan and a process.
Do the painful stuff early to clear the books, get money to the right players, avoid the stupid negotiating tricks, and give Shanahan and Lynch a full offseason and training camp to get the most out of this team. Which is how a mature leadership team leans on its own strengths and sets up another stage of this extremely extended era.