For the desperately optimistic San Francisco 49ers fans, there will be a path through this brutal remaining maze and into the playoffs.
They'll point to the exceedingly tight race for the NFC West crown, which could hang in the balance until the last week of the season. They'll cross their fingers with injuries, hoping that three of their four best players — quarterback Brock Purdy, defensive end Nick Bosa and offensive tackle Trent Williams — will all come out of the tunnel next week and turn everything around against the Buffalo Bills (9-2). And they'll definitely avoid thinking about how eerily similar this campaign has become to the 2020 season, when San Francisco was beset by health and identity issues following a Super Bowl loss the previous season, leading to a massively disappointing 6-10 record that inspired an eventual roster retooling.
On that latter point, it’s hard to ignore the symmetry of that lost 2020 season. Those 49ers were 5-6 going into December, looking like a shadow of themselves, and hosting the Bills in a game that felt like it was the last best chance to salvage the season. San Francisco lost 34-24, in a game that was really never as close as that score suggested. At the conclusion of it, there was clarity that the season was over and the 49ers had a lot of work ahead.
A week from now, the same could and likely will be said about the 2024 49ers, who don't look anything like the team that came out of last season's Super Bowl loss. You could pick any 10-minute increment inside Sunday's atrocious 38-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers — the 49ers' worst defeat under Shanahan since 2018 — and find alarming traits everywhere. A team that couldn't dictate the run or find anything explosive throwing the football. A defensive front that got slapped in the ear by Packers running back Josh Jacobs on his first carry of the game and never seemed to recover. An overall lack of focus that led to nine penalties, several occurring at critical moments. And an overwhelming presentation of underwhelming football that suggests these 49ers will fail to recover, just like the last edition that lost in a Super Bowl the season before.
“The whole game was [disappointing],” Shanahan said afterward. “To label just the biggest [disappointment], the first half, just the run defense was real disappointing. … Them being able to control that clock in the first half was one of the worst ones I’ve been a part of as far as a half.”
Shanahan uttered some iteration of the word “embarrassed” multiple times in his postgame press conference, applying the label to the entire team, which seemed like the appropriate reaction to a loss that is half lesson and half warning.
The lesson: The 49ers are as mortal as any other team that can’t survive without a marquee starting quarterback, elite edge rusher and tone-setting offensive tackle. When they’re wounded, they’re vulnerable, especially against top-tier NFC teams — which the Packers are.
And the warning: Let this be the standard that ends all the talk about Shanahan being able to make it work with any quarterback in his scheme, particularly if it's a one-game situation. It's a fallacy that has been proven before, but also conveniently and repeatedly forgotten anytime someone dares to enter Purdy's name into a conversation about the league's best QBs. Yes, he's had his ups and downs this season. But rarely has the offense looked so flat and seemingly intent on shooting itself in the foot.
If anything, that Packers loss is a snapshot reminder of what life can be like when you don’t have a dependable quarterback running Shanahan’s offense. Certainly all the issues weren’t simply the absence of Purdy, but the inability to find any kind of fix over the course of the game surely had something to do with the quarterback spot. As it turns out, the system usually looks best when the quarterback who fits and masters that system is the one at the controls. That’s food for thought this offseason, when there will inevitably be conversations about the cost of Purdy’s contract extension versus his actual value to the franchise.
Of course, that's a conversation for a later time. For now, the focus is on what this loss means for the 49ers. With the Los Angeles Rams' loss to the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday night, the NFC West remains in the hands of the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals — both sitting at 6-5 and simultaneously jockeying for who will win the division and who will try to qualify for the NFC's last wild-card slot. At 5-6, the 49ers haven't exactly been left in vapor when it comes to the postseason but even if the math is still there for the taking, the spirit of what is reaching for it is problematic.
Purdy was already having consistency issues before his latest throwing shoulder pain knocked him out of the game against the Packers. There’s no telling how big of an issue that’s going to be when (or if) he returns. Although it’s certainly suggestive that in a game the 49ers needed to win against Green Bay, his shoulder was a big enough concern to sideline him. The same goes for Bosa’s hip and Williams’ ankle. Both might be close to returning, but neither is guaranteed to be playing at their peak level — for a team that needs them to be playing at a high level right now. And if that wasn’t enough, two other key players, defensive tackle Jordan Elliott and offensive guard Aaron Banks both exited Sunday with concussion concerns.
Now with the loss to the Packers, the intersection of these health issues comes heading into the cross-country-iest of cross-country road games: Sunday night’s prime-time tilt against a streaking Bills team. A franchise that will be well-rested, coming off a bye week, and stalking the AFC’s No. 1 playoff seed after beating the Kansas City Chiefs convincingly in Week 11. While that kind of win would usually enlist some fears of a letdown in the next game, the bye week and postseason seeding stakes for the Bills effectively guarantee that they’ll show up ready to rock.
If we're being honest about what the 49ers are facing from a schedule perspective, the time to win was against the Packers. That they weren't able to win Sunday makes this game against the Bills and every one after it a pseudo playoff game. Basically, that's where the 49ers are at. They're in a single-elimination postseason tournament starting this week. And after the Bills, it's the Chicago Bears (still working their own problems out but getting better), the Rams (who beat the 49ers in September), the Miami Dolphins (who are a handful with Tua Tagovailoa back under center), the Detroit Lions (Super Bowl favorites, winners of nine straight, and seeking revenge for the NFC title game loss), and finally, a road game against the Arizona Cardinals, who are no longer being pushed around.
If we want to simmer down San Francisco’s problems, we don’t need to get into the injuries, focus and inconsistencies within games. We can look at just that uphill break — which is more like scaling Mt. Everest at this point — and it tells us everything we need to know.
The 49ers' 2024 season is done. We just haven’t watched it play out yet.
