SANTA CLARA, Calif. — And in the end, after another postseason heartbreak, after an emotionally draining offseason, after a dramatic standoff and a devastating wave of injuries, after a personal tragedy, after a star player’s criticism, and after a team’s hopes hang in the balance. , an infuriating and surreal tapout, the San Francisco 49ers’ 2024 season has finally collapsed under its own weight.
Buried beneath the rubble, unable to speak in a barely audible voice, was Kyle Shanahan. He was the man most responsible for the 49ers’ failure and the biggest culprit in their final attempt to prolong what seemed like a doomed era. Founded last February.
Shanahan, the Niners’ eighth-year coach, stood at the lectern after a loss that almost mathematically eliminated the defending NFC champions from playoff contention, courtesy of his fiercest pro rival. Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams (8-6) boosted their playoff hopes with a 12-6 win Thursday night at Levi’s Stadium while the 49ers (6-8) were a team that lacked the purpose, precision and cohesion to play beyond that. exposed. The first weekend of January.
In the end, Shanahan’s offense, desperate in the rain-soaked Northern California air, failed to produce a single touchdown, San Francisco’s special teams were generally sloppy and an uncharacteristically strong defensive effort led to veteran linebacker De’Vondre. It was damaged by ‘Campbell Sr.’ When summoned in the third quarter, he surprisingly refused to enter the game.
It all depends on Shanahan. So he was sitting in a big chair, and he wasn’t trying to run away from the chair.
“It’s not good enough,” Shanahan said Thursday of his adjusted offensive effort, but those words applied to this loss and everything else about this difficult season.
Those words also served as an epitaph for six seasons in which the 49ers suffered two excruciating Super Bowl losses to the Kansas City Chiefs, lost two NFC Championship Games (including one to McVay’s Rams), and assembled a prolific roster. With some of the most talented and resilient players in the league.
Together they built a strong foundation, won many big games and felt indomitable at times.
What we witnessed Thursday night was the wreckage of the NFL. The group tasked with cleaning it up and standing up will look much different in 2025 and beyond.
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A tale of two 49ers linebackers: Dre Greenlaw in, De’Vondre Campbell out — suddenly.
“There’s been a dark cloud over the whole season,” veteran cornerback Charvarius Ward told me after the game. “This is going to be a great offseason for this team to regroup, refocus and try to get the spark back.”
Ward, a second-team All-Pro in 2023, is headed to unrestricted free agency next March and is one of many marquee 49ers who may not make the roster next year.
Ward continued: “I don’t know if I will come back. But I know this team will still be great with or without me.”
That remains to be seen, as Thursday’s faceplant, and indeed this season as a whole, highlighted just how different this 49ers team is from the one that came before it.
Once again: not enough. In reality, it’s not even close.
The NFL is a production business, and Shanahan, who assembled and coached this group alongside general manager John Lynch, will have to bear the brunt of the team’s consistently substandard performance. The Niners have only two wins against opponents with winning records (the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and have suffered three brutal losses to division foes after squandering late leads.
They had a chance to stay in the NFC West race on Thursday, but they fell woefully short and produced a low-key reel in the process.
Wide receiver Deebo Samuel Sr., who complained earlier this week on social media that he wasn’t getting the ball enough, suffered a brutal drop and likely missed his chance to reach the end zone for a game-changing score. The 49ers were penalized for two illegal formation penalties on punts. Shanahan went unusually conservative after Brock Purdy connected with tight end George Kittle on a 33-yard pass early in the game – against a defense that gave up 42 points to the Buffalo Bills four days ago – and scored three straight points in Rams territory. Jake Moody’s 53-yard field goal settled the decision. And Purdy, coming off his best game of the season, struggled in the rain (a recurring theme) and was essentially killed later when he threw a brutal end zone interception that put the 49ers in range for a game-tying field goal with 5:20 left. their opportunity.
Deebo Samuel had a chance to make a game-changing play for the 49ers. Instead, he dropped the ball. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
And surprisingly, any mistake could have been the most humiliating moment of the night. It belonged to Campbell, a veteran linebacker who was signed in March as a placeholder for Dre Greenlaw. He’s a passionate playmaker who finally returned Thursday after tearing his Achilles tendon while running down the field after a punt during the second quarter of Super Bowl LVIII. It took a night to save San Francisco’s season.
He almost did before his body betrayed him. The 27-year-old enforcer, one of the most criminally underrated stars in sports, picked up where he left off in the Super Bowl last February, before the devastating injury that helped defeat the Niners.
It would have made a lot of sense if Greenlaw was rusty against the Rams.
He wasn’t like that. Rather, he was the best player on the field.
Greenlaw had eight tackles, many of them sudden and violent, but left the game midway through the third quarter with a stiff knee. At that point Campbell was the next man up.
But Campbell didn’t exactly become a man.
According to Shanahan and numerous players, Campbell seemed upset about losing his job to Greenlaw. This wasn’t a shocking development to anyone inside or outside the 49ers’ locker room. Campbell refused to participate in the game.
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The 49ers’ De’Vondre Campbell refused to play and left the TNF game in the third quarter.
“He said he didn’t want to play today,” Shanahan said. Campbell, who was eventually sent from the field to the locker room, was described as “selfish” by Ward and Kittle in the postgame interview.
“That was his plan.” Ward told me. “He made up his mind. I mean, that’s crazy. He’s not a better player than Dre. Did you see it today? (Greenlaw) is the engine of our defense and the guy who starts everything for us. But I think (Campbell’s decision to sit out the game) will be around for a while.”
The juxtaposition of Campbell quitting his teammates and the resilience of players like Ward and rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was staggering.
Pearsall, who was shot in the chest during an attempted robbery just before the season began, missed six games before returning and making his NFL debut. Ward has missed three games since his daughter, Amani Joy, died in October, just before her second birthday. (Amani Joy was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect that required surgery.)
After Thursday’s game, Ward opened up to me about the trauma he and his family have endured and did his best to confirm his commitment to his teammates while acknowledging that football is not the most important force in his life at the moment. .
“Personally, it was difficult to come to work every day, every game. “Even going to practice or attending meetings was difficult,” he admits. “I almost left several times. S—, I know my fans probably hate me (for saying that), but F— that’s reality. I think it’s bigger than soccer. “This is definitely the most difficult time of my life.”
In that context, the football team’s lost season is nothing compared to that. But if you don’t have enough, it still hurts. Athletes and coaches put tremendous amounts of energy, intensity, and dedication into a cause, and then get sad when they don’t achieve their goals. This is especially true for directors.
In the coming weeks and months, Shanahan will have to realistically think for himself about how it all went wrong and how he and Lynch can work to make things right in 2025 and the years beyond.
I have three games to play in the meantime, and none of them seem to matter. While noting that the 49ers are still technically in playoff contention, it would take a series of wildly improbable results to reach the postseason, and Shanahan acknowledged that his dreams of finally winning a championship with this incarnation of his team are basically over. “They say, mathematically, we still have a chance,” he said. “I’m not too worried about that right now. … I want to come back and play better football and challenge the character of our team.”
Clearly shocked, Shanahan looked as if he had seen a ghost. Metaphorically speaking, that was true. Across the sideline Thursday night was the coach’s former franchise quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, now the Rams’ backup to Matthew Stafford. And, of course, McVay, a former Shanahan assistant, challenged him for coaching supremacy, won the Lombardi Trophy that eluded Shanahan, and deftly reshaped the Rams for each past year after hitting rock bottom in 2022. Two seasons.
Last Sunday, McVay orchestrated an offensive explosion that facilitated a 44-42 upset win over the Bills and kept the Rams in hot pursuit of the Seahawks (8-5) in the division race. On Thursday, after Los Angeles cornerback Darious Williams picked off Purdy’s overturned deep ball intended for Jauan Jennings with 5:20 left in the end zone, McVay and his players became the closer Shanahan and his 49ers have struggled with all season.
When the Rams took control at the 20-yard line, 9-6 with 5:20 remaining, McVay had no intention of giving the ball back.
“That’s the responsibility I felt.” he said late Thursday night as he walked from the visiting team’s locker room to the team bus. “Now (the 49ers) have a say in that too.”
Soon the Rams silenced them. After 13 plays, 69 yards and just two third downs, Joshua Karty hit his fourth field goal to make it a six-point game. With just 20 seconds remaining, the 49ers’ last desperate gasp ended when Purdy was sacked on the game, or for all intents and purposes, the season, by Christian Rozeboom at his own 44-yard line with no time on the clock. Or period.
“This was not an easy victory,” McVay said. “Their defense was really, really good. They flew all night. And the elements were really tough, especially in the first half. But this is a mentally tough team. I love our resilience. I like that we can win in many different ways. I love what we created.”
It used to be a sentiment Shanahan could truly express about his team. In 2024, if he’s being honest, that no longer applies. Shanahan’s players and assistant coaches have many responsibilities, but most of all, the responsibility falls on him.
The 49ers weren’t good enough in 2024, and neither was he.
(Top photo: Kelley L Cox/Imagn Images)
