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GLENDALE, Ariz. — Embarrassing.
That’s the way Nick Bosa described this San Francisco 49ers season. And he’s not wrong.
Rather than going out with pride and energy, instead of ending on a high note, the 49ers completed their season-long face plant here in the Arizona desert, falling to a hapless Cardinals team, 47-24.
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The humbling defeat ended a season filled with cringe-worthy moments. The 49ers finished 6-11, with a 1-5 record in the weak NFC West.
It was the final indignity in the worst season ever in the Kyle Shanahan–John Lynch era, given the expectations and hopes when the season began, the roster talent and the payroll, and the extreme mediocrity of their division.
Given all of that, it has been a disaster.
“We’ve been processing this all year,” Shanahan said. “We’ve been trying to get there and you don’t really accept that you’re not going to get there until you’re eliminated from the playoffs.
“We were trying to finish it with a win. We didn’t get that today, but excited to get to this offseason and figure out how to not be in this situation again.”
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There is an awful lot to figure out after this awful season. Coaching staff and assignments, roster personnel, free agency and draft priorities, cultural adjustments.
The 49ers’ apologists will draw parallels between this season and the 2020 season that also ended in the Arizona desert — where the 49ers were quarantined for the final six weeks of the season. They’ll note the injuries that were also a part of the Niners’ woes in 2020 after losing Super Bowl LIV, and that the 49ers were able to bounce back the next season, in large part because of the last-place schedule they had earned. They spent the three subsequent seasons as one of the NFL’s most-feared teams.
And, yes, there are similarities but there are also extreme differences, and not only because that weird and lousy season happened in a pandemic. This team is built upon many of the same key players, who are all now four years older, with far longer injury histories and far less tread on their tires. That 2020 team was still young in football terms; the 2019 Super Bowl team the season before probably arrived earlier than expected. The 49ers had not yet squandered three first-round draft picks for Trey Lance. The future was bright and full of flexibility.
But now, while the 49ers’ Super Bowl window isn’t completely closed it is definitely not wide-open. The 49ers might be able to get their swagger back next season with the forgiving nature of a fourth-place schedule littered with awful teams. But they must not be in denial about how much work is needed to regain their once-formidable aura. They can’t expect to simply run this group back and try to recreate 2023. While they don’t need a total rebuild, they definitely need a major retooling.
In the past three seasons, the 49ers have hit rough patches but were able to recover and go on winning streaks. Because of that history, they seemed to assume that they were going to snap out of their slide this season. It didn’t happen.
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“Embarrassment. It doesn’t feel good,” Bosa said of his season-ending feelings. “It’s hard to look the guys in their faces, as a leader on the team. That that’s the product that we kept putting out game after game. It’s pretty embarrassing.”
To their credit, the 49ers’ players did not point the finger at injuries, because they know this was about more than missing key players. Other teams — like Kansas City and Detroit — have also been hit hard by injuries, yet have found ways to win games.
Both George Kittle and Fred Warner — the respective leaders of the offense and defense — pointed the finger most prominently at turnovers. The 49ers’ offense turned the ball over and the defense couldn’t force turnovers: since coming back from the bye week they have a minus-14 turnover margin, second-worst in the NFL, just ahead of the Cleveland Browns. On Sunday, they turned the ball over three times, in contrast to Arizona’s clean sheet.
“The reasons why we’re losing is not very fun: turnovers, not converting in the red zone, not scoring points,” Kittle said.
Warner said, “The takeaways, the lack thereof, is what killed us. We pride ourselves in taking the ball away and protecting it on offense. That’s the key to winning games and when you’re not doing that you don’t give yourself any type of chance of winning.”
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Injuries were, of course, a factor. The 49ers have to take a hard look at offensive tackle Trent Williams, who missed the final seven games with an ankle injury. When asked a few weeks ago if it was potentially a career-ender for the lineman who will be 37 next season, Shanahan said, “not that we’ve heard,” which is a different answer from a hard “no.”
Is Christian McCaffrey going to get healthy? He arrived in Santa Clara with a reputation as being injury-prone but had been productive with the 49ers until this season. But he has now played in 46 of 84 regular-season games in the past five seasons, or just slightly over 50% of his games.
There are a lot of hard questions that the 49ers will be pondering as the postseason rolls on without them for the first time in four years.
As this miserable season has progressed, the 49ers have been more honest about the mental toll losing the Super Bowl took on them. This week Deebo Samuel, who was held out of Sunday’s game due to injury, went on Amon-Ra St. Brown’s podcast and told the Detroit receiver that losing the Super Bowl put him “in depression.”
“You go months without talking to people, wanting to be seen,” Samuel said. “Losing the Super Bowl is one of the worst feelings ever… You went through the whole season, we got here, we lose and now you’re going back to work in three weeks about to do it all over again.”
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It turns out the 49ers couldn’t do it all over again. Not even close. They ended their season embarrassed.
And now comes the hard work.
Reach Ann Killion: [email protected]; X: @annkillion
