SANTA CLARA—The West Coast warmth wave wreaked havoc on the 49ers’ follow schedule this previous week, main coach Kyle Shanahan to joke that he, like his gamers, will take intravenous fluids to rehydrate.
“I still do it, if I had too much fun the night before,” Shanahan mentioned.
Sure, Shanahan is aware of the remedy for his hangovers.
Now, does he know find out how to repair his workforce’s?
The Niners’ Tremendous Bowl hangover is actual. It’s been actual for months.
It has manifested within the boring vitality across the workforce within the preseason, and a slog of a September. After which Sunday’s unbelievable, downright comedic fourth-quarter collapse to the Cardinals in a 24-23 loss was the little bit of additional “fun” that put it over the sting.
At 2-3 on the season, now, there’s no pretending this workforce can stick with it with enterprise as typical. It wants fluids, stat.
It’s on Shanahan and the 49ers’ management to offer them.
As a result of this workforce’s season hangs within the stability within the subsequent three video games. On Thursday, the Niners will play the Seahawks in Seattle. Then they’ll host the Chiefs and Cowboys in back-to-back dwelling video games earlier than a bye week.
If this workforce can’t pull itself collectively by then, I shudder to consider how dangerous the signs of this hangover might be within the hellacious second half of the season.
I’m preventing the urge to say that the season is over as a result of Shanahan nonetheless deserves the advantage of the doubt right here: Irrespective of the circumstances during the last seven seasons, he has been capable of maintain his workforce collectively. The telltale catty feedback and hardly hidden backstabbing we see with actually spiraling groups have by no means occurred in Santa Clara, even when issues had been dangerous.
“I haven’t lost confidence in this group. We’ve been through worse,” Nick Bosa mentioned Sunday.
And he’s proper.
However, concurrently, the Niners have by no means been in a state of affairs fairly like this.
If 2024 was presupposed to be the 49ers’ “Last Dance,” they haven’t made it to the dance flooring but.
The final Tremendous Bowl hangover, again in 2020, featured a worldwide pandemic and a younger, upstart workforce. You may forgive that form of workforce for ending at 6-10—they began three quarterbacks and needed to stay in a resort in Arizona for the ultimate month of the season.
This 12 months’s workforce has no such extenuating well being emergency (although its harm listing is arguably at an epidemic stage), and it options veteran after veteran with large names and large paychecks.
The dynamic is completely different. This workforce just isn’t one which should discover ways to win — it’s constructed to win, and nothing else however profitable will do.
And to date this season, they’re falling woefully in need of that mark.
Take Sunday’s sport as one of the best living proof but.
We underestimated these 49ers. It seems that they might, in truth, discover a worse solution to lose this season. This workforce’s collapse to the Rams in Week 3 proved far much less embarrassing than Sunday’s loss to the Arizona Cardinals.
The Niners choked away one other 10-point fourth-quarter lead — a 13-point second-half lead — with a scoreless second half.
Pink-zone futility, together with a vital misplaced fumble with six-plus minutes to play, an injured place-kicker, which resulted within the Niners going for a fourth-and-23 from Arizona’s 27-yard line late within the third quarter, and a withering protection, which allowed 5.2 yards per carry within the remaining body, all got here collectively (with so many extra unbecoming elements) to drop the Niners beneath .500 once more.
They’ll have one mild follow earlier than taking part in once more on Thursday.
That fast turnaround will probably be cited as a constructive. I’m not right here to say it’s a detrimental.
As a result of to resolve in some way with these Niners is a idiot’s errand. There’s merely nothing predictable about this workforce to date this season.
There’s not one factor you may take without any consideration on this workforce proper now. Every part is in flux. The one consistency is inconsistency.
And shouldn’t a workforce that fancies itself like a Tremendous Bowl contender play at that stage greater than as soon as 5 weeks right into a season? Even reducing the bar, shouldn’t that workforce’s finest soccer not are available its first sport?
Sure, we must always have seen this disjointedness coming.
There hasn’t been a single second this season—even going again to mini-camps within the spring—when this workforce felt organized, copasetic, and understood.
Whether or not it was off-the-field contract drama, harm spy video games, or this workforce’s basic chaos on the sphere (which has resulted in much more accidents), the Niners have by no means as soon as felt in management this season.
Even the workforce’s greatest win — a 30-13 win over the Patriots in Week 4 — felt scattershot and haphazard.
The vibes, as the youngsters would say, have been off for months.
They might appropriate this. The Niners might get proper.
The Niners famously began 2021 with a 3-5 report. The following 12 months, they began 3-4. They made the NFC Championship Sport each seasons.
This workforce’s finest soccer might be nonetheless forward. It higher be.
And if that’s the case, the 49ers’ chances are high fairly good.
In spite of everything, moreover the upstart Vikings (who’re good however not that good), who seems to be elite within the NFC this season?
However that highlights the problem for the 49ers: They had been presupposed to be above the fray, so a lot better than not solely their friends, however the uncontrollable elements that observe each profitable workforce — contract drama, harm luck reversal, the load of excessive expectations.
The Niners’ entrance workplace thought it constructed a juggernaut.
And but, after Sunday’s sport, each quarterback Brock Purdy and linebacker Fred Warner talked about how this workforce is on the lookout for its id.
These usually are not the questions one of the best of one of the best needs to be contemplating in October.
(Plus, I already answered the query: The workforce’s id is Purdy and Warner — and neither participant was at his finest Sunday. I assume these guys have to re-up their subscriptions.)
So amid all this uncertainty, and it doesn’t matter what the 49ers do from this level on, one factor has been made clear within the first 5 video games of the season — the perceived “easy” a part of the workforce’s hellacious schedule:
This workforce isn’t any juggernaut.
You may place blame in so many alternative locations for that — summary or all-too-physical — however regardless of the way you slice it, the outcome is identical.
The Niners nonetheless have loads to play for this season. I’m nonetheless not ruling out the likelihood they go all the way in which. Purdy and Warner are nonetheless taking part in, in any case.
However this workforce, like so lots of its injured gamers, is working on a week-to-week foundation.
And in that sense, the concept of 2024 being Tremendous Bowl-or-bust with this workforce has already busted.
Initially Printed: October 6, 2024 at 6:36 p.m.
