The San Francisco 49ers were embarrassed on Sunday Night Football by the Buffalo Bills. There’s no other way to sugar coat it. Dominated in all three phases of the game, Kyle Shanahan and Co. suffered the indignity of not only being beaten by 25 points, but watching as their opponents coasted so easily that they subbed in Mitchell Trubisky to allow Josh Allen to take his victory lap.
There’s no question the Bills are a great team, one with legitimate Super Bowl potential — but the 49ers were supposed to be as well. Now they’re 5-7, the season is effectively over with the news that Christian McCaffrey is likely done for the remainder of the season with a PCL injury. Rather than viewing this team as one of the class organizations of the NFC, we now need to ponder whether injuries, age, and the collapse of Shanahan’s system has caused the 49ers’ window to slam shut — and perhaps more importantly: Is there a way to open it again?
The precipitous fall of the 49ers
Much has been made of the offensive woes of San Francisco this season, and those took place to be sure. The loss of McCaffrey for the majority of 2024 is something the team has struggled to deal with, but this team has also contended a down year from Brandon Aiyuk, as well as a significant regression by Brock Purdy which has turned their offense from 3rd in the NFL in scoring a year ago, to 15th in 2024.
While the offense has garnered the majority of headlines, it’s the collapse of the 49ers’ defense that has been most profound in 2024. Compared to a year ago the team is, well, soft. San Francisco has always executed a fairly basic, but brutally effective defensive system. They bend against the pass in the center of the field, then tighten up in the red zone to stop scoring. Meanwhile they’re routinely boasted one of the best run-stopping units in the NFL, ranking in the top-five from 2020-2023.
This year that’s fallen apart. The team is allowing 6.9 points more per game than they did in 2023, causing the team to drop from 3rd in the league in points allowed, to 25th. Meanwhile they’ve plummeted from being a This is mirrored by losing both phases of the defense, where they have plummeted from 3rd in the league against the run, to 15th. While it’s fair to attribute some of this drop off to injuries, there’s also another part of the story which isn’t talked about nearly enough.
San Francisco has drafted horribly for several years
When you look at foundation of what made the 49ers dominant it was their absolutely stellar mid-round drafting at the beginning of Shanahan’s tenure. San Francisco executed better than any team after the first day, essentially filling their roster with stars from the 2nd and 3rd days of the NFL Draft. For three years from 2017-2020 their mid-round drafting is a who’s-who of key starters and critical contributors.
- George Kittle (5th round, 2017)
- D.J. Jones (6th round, 2017)
- Fred Warner (3rd round, 2018)
- Dre Greenlaw (5th round, 2019)
These are just the standout players. In addition the 49ers found dozens of valuable, short-term contributors to bolster their roster who have since moved on to other teams. However, beginning with the 2021 NFL Draft it’s been drought for San Francisco.
So much is made of finding Brock Purdy in the 7th round of the 2022 NFL Draft that it’s given everyone collective amnesia that outside of Purdy this team has struggled to find anyone of note. Of the THIRTY FOUR players the team has drafted from 2021 to 2024 Purdy is the only guy who remotely looks like a star, with Talanoa Hufanga being the only other guy you could really give credit as being legit.
This has led to a profound resource drain to the 49ers. They kept up their turn-and-burn roster approach of letting guys leave and restocking with the draft, but the issue is that they simply stopped drafting well. That has intensified the fall-off due to injuries, which in turn has taken away a lot of the magic.
It’s difficult to really see anyone in the 49ers system right now who seems destined to be a star. Ricky Pearsall could develop into a decent receiver, but he simply doesn’t look nearly as impactful as Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk were on the organization. Meanwhile the defensive side of the ball is lacking anyone who looks poised for greatness.
Drafting Purdy was the ideal cover for the 49ers to avoid criticism over trading up and taking Trey Lance with the No. 3 pick in 2021, and Purdy has continued to be put on a pedestal as an example of San Francisco’s drafting greatness, while the reality is that they’ve been extremely bad at drafting for three years in a row.
Age is catching up with them
The 49ers entered the 2024 NFL season ranked 5th-oldest in the league, with an average age of 26.88. The issue the team now faces is that they’re getting old and banged up at their most critical positions.
Trent Williams keeps the offensive line afloat, and at this point he’s playing on borrowed time. Williams is destined to be a Hall of Fame left tackle, but at age 36 he realistically only has one or two more effective years left in the tank, at most. When he goes the offensive line will plummet, and we’ve already seen the 49ers be less-than-stellar this season both in pass production, and run blocking.
At this point it’s impossible to know what Christian McCaffrey’s future is. Wear-and-tear is starting to catch up with him, and with over 1,300 carries and 200 receptions on his body it’s looking increasingly dicey whether or not he’ll be able to remain effective.
Leonard Floyd, George Kittle, Kyle Juszczyk, De’Vondre Campbell — all starters over the age of 30 without a solid backup plan in place.
If this team is struggling with these guys, there’s not much beyond hope that tells you they’ll be able to turn it all around as they begin to decline.
There’s also the question of Shanahan’s offense
Once seen as the gold standard of offensive innovation, the Shanahan West Coast offense is starting to lose its shine. That’s not just happening in San Francisco, but down every branch of his coaching tree.
The teams running variations of the Shanahan offense with former coordinator under his tutelage are all struggling to consistently score in 2024.
Meanwhile the top scoring teams in the NFL, the Lions, Bills, and Ravens are either running Erhardt-Perkins or Air Coryell. Defenses have learned to counter the Shanahan offense by getting more athletic at linebacker, adding lateral speed, and shutting down explosive plays that come after the catch. We’re back to pounding the ball inside on the run, and setting up deep passes through the air.
That’s not something you can just switch to and from overnight, and if this trend continues it’s difficult to see how the 49ers can retool their offense to hang.
The 49ers can still be good, but it’s getting more difficult to see a path forward
The profound amount of injuries San Francisco has sustained is impossible to ignore. This goes beyond the simple “everyone is beat up this time of year” phraseology, because of how profound the injury impact to this team has been.
That said, it’s difficult to see what the next step for the 49ers will be — even if healthy. Age is catching up with them, bad drafting is catching up with them, the scheme is getting stale, and it’s starting to become unclear if Brock Purdy really is the guy. Time could prove this wrong, but it’s beginning to look an awful lot like Kyle Shanahan’s team is regressing, and there’s no way to stop the downward spiral.
The NFC West is still a weak division. There’s absolutely a way this team can return to the playoffs and make an impact once more. However, right now it looks a lot more like the 49ers are set on a path to fade like the Cowboys or Bengals, rather than take the next step like the Bills or Lions did. That’s simply the reality right now.
