The impressive feat isn’t that the San Francisco 49ers have been to the NFC Conference Championship or better in four of the last five seasons. The impressive feat is that they did so with Jimmy Garoppolo behind center for more than half those campaigns, all in the midst of trading three first round picks to select one of the millennium’s biggest draft busts.
There’s no point playing the “what if” game in an NFL loaded with moving parts. The past half-decade has been agonizing for San Francisco, left stranded at “good” on the way to greatness thanks to an engine lacking the extra gear to be the difference. General manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan were able to offset low wattage quarterback play and the missing star power of those forgone Day 1 picks with savvy additions elsewhere. It hasn’t been enough to result in a Super Bowl win.
Now, the NFL’s hard salary cap threatens to change the makeup of this team after 2024. We’ve already seen this manifest in Brandon Aiyuk’s trade request and the team’s reticence to offer him the $30+ million annual salary befitting an All-Pro wide receiver. Six different Niners are scheduled for cap hits of at least $20 million in 2025, creating a future in which San Francisco’s salary sheet sees 60 percent of the team’s spending devoted to just those players — and the Niners are currently an estimated $38.9 million over next year’s cap, per Over the Cap. That’s before considering a contract extension for Brock Purdy, the seventh round quarterback scheduled to make just over $2.1 million the next two years combined.
As such, this may be the last chance for the 49ers to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy with their current core. Without some team-friendly pay cuts, a change is coming. Fortunately for San Francisco, there’s enough proven talent to both make a run at the title in 2024 and survive any loss of star power in 2025.
Brock Purdy leaned in and emerged as one of the NFL’s most efficient deep quarterbacks
Purdy is the reason why San Francisco could burn three first round picks on Trey Lance, a player who’d appear in eight total games as a 49er. The former Iowa State star needs no introduction as the most famous final selection of any NFL Draft. Purdy rose from third stringer to Super Bowl starter, paving the way for Lynch to deal Lance away for the minimal cost of a fourth round pick.
The most striking thing about Purdy’s emergence in 2023 was his ability to work inside Shanahan’s game plan and turn his rookie season weakness — a tendency to float deep throws — into a relative strength. Purdy completed only four of 12 passes to travel at least 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage in seven games in 2022. In 16 regular season games last fall, he attempted 38 such throws and completed 23 of them, per SIS.
Those 38 deep balls were only 23rd most in the NFL last season, but his 60.5 percent completion rate was tops among all quarterbacks. How’d that work? Because Purdy also peppered the intermediate range (10-19 yards downfield) with accurate throws to a lineup filled with playmakers. Shanahan could layer his threats — Aiyuk deep(ish), Deebo Samuel waiting to crush short routes and run after catch afterward and George Kittle in the middle — to effectively diffuse defenses and create space for the deep shots opposing secondaries didn’t quite expect.
The end result was seven games in which Purdy averaged better than 10 yards per pass attempt. It manifests in passing charts like this, where a concentration of chain-moving intermediate throws:
creates single coverage opportunities like this:
Everything needs to work correctly for this clock to tick, from Shanahan’s play calling to Aiyuk’s ability to get open to Purdy’s rainbow to the spot he knows his top wideout will be. But Aiyuk isn’t merely a cog. He was ultra efficient last season; his 3.0 yards per route run (YPRR) ranked third in the NFL behind only Tyreek Hill and Nico Collins last fall.
That’s the danger in letting someone like Aiyuk go. While San Francisco has the capacity to replace him — there’s a reason they spent this year’s 31st overall pick on Ricky Pearsall — there’s also an inherent risk there. Lose the guy who can maximize Purdy’s perfectly timed deep shots and you take a gear out of the Niners’ offensive engine.
Of course, there are other gears in place to keep the team Formula 1 fresh. There are three 2023 first-team All-Pros Purdy can target on checkdowns; George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey and Kyle Juszczyk. Deebo Samuel remains to handle whatever responsibilities Shanahan can throw at him. Jauan Jennings rises up when it matters most (and when opponents are most dialed in on all the other heavy hitters in the lineup).
Factor in a run game that averaged nearly five yards per carry, and you’ve got the league’s top offense — by a wide margin.
This all points to a unit that can handle some attrition, even if it means Purdy may not lead the league in deep ball efficiency going forward. While that won’t necessarily be a glaring issue, it could be of some concern if a good defense can’t rise back to greatness.
San Francisco is relying on recovering stars and veteran additions to be elite again
The Niners were dealt a pair of brutal blows in 2023. All-Pro safety Tanaloa Hufanga, in the midst of a season in which he’d stamped his claim as a true deterrent in the middle of the field, tore his ACL in the 10th game of the season. Then, 12 plays into his Super Bowl 58, inside linebacker Dre Greenlaw tore his Achilles. This created vulnerabilities against the quarterback you least want to create an opening for, and Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs eventually prevailed 25-22 in overtime.
Since both those injuries came late in the season, they’ll have an impact on 2024. Hufanga is shooting to be ready for the team’s season opener but still waiting on the all clear from doctors. Greenlaw is also aiming for a Week 1 return, but that would be a seven month turnaround for an injury that generally takes nine months to heal.
That’s a concern for a defense that was good, but not elite, with those two guys in the lineup for the majority of 2023. San Francisco ranked third in the NFL in points allowed last season but eighth in yards given up and yards per play and 10th in expected points added (EPA) allowed per snap. Strong numbers for sure, but not nearly as dominant as the 2022 group that led the league in points, yards and EPA allowed.
New, veteran arrivals will help. Oren Burks, roasted in the Super Bowl in Greenlaw’s stead, has been replaced by former All-Pro De’Vondre Campbell. Arik Armstead’s old spot will be filled by Maliek Collins, fresh off his finest season as a pass rusher (five sacks, 18 quarterback hits). Chase Young and Randy Gregory have been swapped out of a deep edge rushing rotation for Leonard Floyd and Yetur Gross-Matos, who had 15 sacks between them in 2023. Tracy Walker’s here as Hufanga insurance.
These are all solid, common sense moves, but its fair to wonder if these veterans can continue to contribute at a high level as they age into their 30s. For San Francisco to truly take a step forward and move toward a new era in comfort it will need young contributors to step up like Hufanga did two years ago.
Safety Ji’Ayir Brown is well on that path after a solid rookie campaign. The 2024 NFL Draft dropped cornerback Renardo Green (second round) and safety Malik Mustapha (fourth) onto the depth chart as well. Big efforts from that group would go a long way in shoring up any concerns about the team’s secondary depth.
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It’s possible that concern is overblown. The Niners’ misery is a level of success most teams would kill for. Their ability to win regardless of circumstance means they’re destined to run toward the top of an unbalanced NFC for the next five years no matter who leaves.
And indeed, if Lynch and Shanahan continue to turn mid-draft prospects into All-Pros on a regular basis, it won’t matter if they reduce some first round selections into cinders or lose some of the more expensive guys they’ve developed to the open market. But that’s no easy task, making it fair to wonder if 2024 becomes a hinge for a team that’s been, for the most part, rigid in its place as a Super Bowl contender.
This only serves to focus the microscope more tightly on one of the NFL’s most scrutinized teams. The 49ers have the personnel to make another Super Bowl run. Now they have to prove they can get over the hump with this group as significant changes loom on the horizon.
