SANTA CLARA, Calif. — And ultimately, after one other postseason heartbreak, after an emotionally exhausting offseason, after the drama-filled holdouts and the gnarly wave of accidents and the private tragedies, after a star participant’s lash-out and, with a workforce’s hopes hanging within the steadiness, an infuriating and surreal tap-out, the San Francisco 49ers’ 2024 season lastly collapsed below its personal weight.
Buried below the wreckage, barely in a position to communicate at an audible quantity, was Kyle Shanahan — the person who had probably the most to do with the 49ers’ failings, and the largest wrongdoer behind a last-gasp try to increase an period that appeared doomed from its inception final February.
Shanahan, the Niners’ eighth-year coach, was standing at a lectern after the defeat that every one however mathematically eradicated the defending NFC champions from playoff rivalry, one which got here courtesy of his fiercest skilled rival. With a 12-6 victory at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday evening, Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams (8-6) boosted their playoff hopes whereas exposing the 49ers (6-8) as a workforce that lacked the aim, precision and unity to play past the primary weekend in January.
In the long run, with desperation within the rain-filled Northern California air, Shanahan’s offense couldn’t produce a single landing, San Francisco’s particular groups have been sometimes sloppy and an uncharacteristically sturdy defensive effort was marred by veteran linebacker De’Vondre Campbell Sr.’s gorgeous refusal to enter the sport when summoned within the third quarter.
All of that falls on Shanahan — that’s why he sits within the huge chair — and he made no try to run from it.
“Not adequate,” Shanahan stated of the offensive effort he coordinated Thursday, although the phrases utilized to all the pieces about this defeat and to this difficult season.
These phrases additionally served as an epitaph to a six-season stretch wherein the 49ers suffered two excruciating Tremendous Bowl defeats to the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, misplaced a pair of wrenching NFC Championship Video games (together with one to McVay’s Rams) and assembled a loaded roster stacked with a number of the league’s most proficient and resilient gamers.
Collectively, they constructed a formidable basis, received plenty of huge video games and at occasions felt indomitable.
What we witnessed Thursday evening was the NFL’s equal of rubble — and the group charged with cleansing it up, and rising from it, will look a lot, a lot totally different in 2025 and past.
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“There’s been a darkish cloud over us all season,” veteran cornerback Charvarius Ward instructed me after the sport. “This will probably be an excellent offseason for this workforce to regroup, refocus and attempt to rekindle the spark.”
Ward, a second-team All-Professional in 2023, is headed for unrestricted free company subsequent March and is likely one of the many marquee 49ers who won’t be on subsequent 12 months’s roster.
“I don’t know if I’m gonna be again,” Ward continued, “however I do know this workforce remains to be gonna be nice, with or with out me.”
That is still to be seen, as a result of Thursday’s faceplant — and, actually, this complete season — has underscored how totally different this 49ers workforce is from its speedy predecessors.
As soon as once more: Not adequate. Realistically, not even shut.
The NFL is a manufacturing enterprise, and Shanahan — who together with normal supervisor John Lynch assembled this group, and was charged with teaching it up — must put on the stain of his workforce’s constantly substandard performances. The Niners have simply two victories over opponents with profitable information (the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and suffered three brutal defeats to division foes after squandering late leads.
On Thursday, with an opportunity to remain within the NFC West race, they fell woefully brief, and produced a lowlight reel within the course of.
Broad receiver Deebo Samuel Sr., who complained on social media earlier within the week that he wasn’t getting the ball sufficient, had a brutal drop that probably value him an opportunity to achieve the top zone for a game-changing rating. The 49ers have been penalized for 2 unlawful formation penalties on punts. Shanahan, after Brock Purdy linked with tight finish George Kittle on a 33-yard move early within the recreation — in opposition to a protection that had given up 42 factors to the Buffalo Payments 4 days earlier — received weirdly conservative, calling three consecutive runs in Rams territory and settling for a 53-yard area purpose by Jake Moody. And Purdy, coming off his greatest recreation of the season, struggled within the rain (a recurring theme) and later threw a brutal end-zone interception with 5:20 remaining and the 49ers in vary for a game-tying area purpose, basically killing their probabilities.
Deebo Samuel had an opportunity to make a game-changing play for the 49ers. As an alternative, he dropped the ball. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Pictures)
And, amazingly, none of these gaffes got here near being the evening’s most ignominious second. That belonged to Campbell, a veteran linebacker signed in March as a placeholder for Dre Greenlaw — the passionate playmaker who tore his Achilles whereas working onto the sector after a punt in the course of the second quarter of Tremendous Bowl LVIII, and who lastly labored his means again Thursday evening to attempt to assist save San Francisco’s season.
He virtually did, earlier than his physique betrayed him. The 27-year-old enforcer, one of many sport’s most criminally underappreciated stars, picked up the place he left off in final February’s Tremendous Bowl, earlier than the farfetched harm that helped doom the Niners to defeat.
Had Greenlaw been rusty in opposition to the Rams, it could have made loads of sense.
He wasn’t. Slightly, he was the perfect participant on the sector.
Greenlaw had eight tackles, a lot of them prolific and sudden and violent, earlier than leaving the sport halfway via the third quarter with knee tightness. At that time, Campbell was the subsequent man up.
Campbell, nevertheless, didn’t precisely man up.
Apparently upset over dropping his job to Greenlaw — hardly a stunning improvement to anybody within the 49ers’ locker room, or outdoors of it — Campbell, based on Shanahan and quite a few gamers, declined to enter the sport.
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“He stated he didn’t wish to play as we speak,” Shanahan stated. Campbell, who finally was despatched off the sector and into the locker room — virtually actually by no means to return — was described as “egocentric” by Ward and Kittle throughout postgame interviews.
“That was his plan,” Ward instructed me. “He had his thoughts made up. I imply, it’s loopy. He’s not a greater participant than Dre. You noticed that as we speak — (Greenlaw)’s the engine of our protection, the man who begins all the pieces for us. However you would see (Campbell’s resolution to not play) coming for some time.”
The juxtaposition of Campbell quitting on his teammates with the resilience of gamers like Ward and rookie large receiver Ricky Pearsall was staggering.
Pearsall, shot via the chest throughout a theft try shortly earlier than the beginning of the season, missed six video games earlier than returning and making his NFL debut. Ward missed three video games after his daughter, Amani Pleasure, died in October, shortly earlier than her second birthday. (Amani Pleasure was born with Down syndrome and a coronary heart defect that required surgical procedure.)
After Thursday’s recreation, Ward opened as much as me in regards to the trauma he and his household have endured, doing his greatest to affirm his dedication to his teammates whereas acknowledging that soccer isn’t the preeminent drive in his life proper now.
“It’s been exhausting for me personally to go to work day-after-day, each recreation — even to apply or go to conferences,” he admitted. “I virtually left a few occasions. S—, I do know followers in all probability hate me (for saying that), however f— it, it’s actual life. It’s greater than soccer. That is the toughest time of my life for certain.”
In that context, a soccer workforce’s misplaced season pales as compared. But falling brief nonetheless hurts. Gamers and coaches channel an excessive quantity of vitality, depth and devotion for the trigger, and after they don’t attain their objectives, they grieve. And that’s very true for the pinnacle coach.
Within the coming weeks and months, Shanahan must be actual with himself as he reckons with the way it all went improper, and the way he and Lynch can attempt to make it proper in 2025, and within the years that comply with.
Within the meantime, there are three video games to play, none of which is able to probably matter. Whereas noting that the 49ers are technically nonetheless in playoff rivalry, reaching the postseason would require a sequence of massively inconceivable outcomes, and Shanahan acknowledged that the dream of lastly profitable a championship with this incarnation of his workforce is principally over. “They are saying mathematically we nonetheless have an opportunity,” he stated. “I’m not too involved with that proper now. … I wish to come again and play higher soccer and problem the character of our workforce.”
Clearly shaken, Shanahan virtually appeared as if he had seen a ghost — which, metaphorically, was sort of true. Throughout the sideline Thursday evening was the coach’s former franchise quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, now a backup to the Rams’ Matthew Stafford. And, after all, there was McVay, a former Shanahan assistant who has since challenged him for teaching supremacy, capturing the Lombardi Trophy that has eluded Shanahan and, after bottoming out in 2022, deftly reshaping the Rams on the fly in every of the previous two seasons.
Final Sunday, McVay schemed up an offensive outburst that fueled a 44-42 upset victory over the Payments and saved the Rams in scorching pursuit of the Seahawks (8-5) within the division race. On Thursday, after L.A. cornerback Darious Williams picked off Purdy’s overthrown deep ball for Jauan Jennings ultimately zone with 5:20 remaining, McVay and his gamers grew to become the closers that Shanahan and his 49ers have struggled all season to be.
When the Rams took over at their very own 20-yard line up 9-6 with 5:20 remaining, McVay had no intention of giving the ball again.
“That’s the accountability I felt,” he stated as he walked from the guests’ locker room to the workforce bus late Thursday evening. “Now, (the 49ers) have a say in that, too.”
Quickly, the Rams silenced them. 13 performs, 69 yards and solely two third downs later, Joshua Karty kicked his fourth area purpose to make it a six-point recreation. Solely 20 seconds remained, and the 49ers’ final, determined gasp ended when Purdy was sacked by Christian Rozeboom at his personal 44-yard line with no time remaining — within the recreation or, for all intents and functions, the season. Or the period.
“This wasn’t a simple win,” McVay stated. “Their protection was actually, actually good; they have been flying round all evening. And the weather made it actually robust, particularly within the first half. However this can be a mentally robust workforce. I like our resilience. I like that we will win in several methods. I like what we’re made from.”
These was sentiments that Shanahan, in all sincerity, may specific about his workforce. In 2024, if he’s being sincere, they now not apply. Shanahan’s gamers and assistant coaches bear loads of accountability, however most of all, it’s on him.
In 2024, the 49ers weren’t adequate, and neither was he.
(Prime picture: Kelley L Cox / Imagn Pictures)
