SANTA CLARA, Calif. — How do you fully honor and get the attention of the leading lights in this starry San Francisco 49ers galaxy?
I think Kyle Shanahan figured it out during a team meeting while he was announcing the list of eight captains this season. I think Shanahan absolutely figured it out.
“I heard we got a parking spot,” Nick Bosa said with a wry seriousness on Thursday that told you he was partly joking and partly enormously pleased not to have to compete for the spaces closest to the locker room.
“No, it’s great. Being a captain on a team like this with so many unbelievable players that have done such great things in this league, it’s an honor. And I just want to live up to it, so I’m going to work hard and be the best leader I can.”
Bosa, back as a captain for the second time after missing last year because the vote was taken while he was holding out, later noted that this will be the first time there will be saved parking spaces for the main leadership group. Trent Williams, for his part, said it was a nice gesture by Shanahan but laughed and added that he’s always taken one of the best spots, anyway. And as Fred Warner noted, nobody has or ever will protest Williams parking wherever he wants.
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All of this, though, is just another indication of the 49ers’ great assemblage of talent at the top and also that they are ever more reliant on those big-name, mostly very highly compensated leaders to carry them. They’ve got so many stars that Shanahan upped the captain count this year from his usual total of six. What else could he do with all these players who are so deeply respected in the locker room?
The holdovers from last year: Warner, Williams, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel and Brock Purdy. (Long-time captain Arik Armstead, since released and now with Jacksonville, is the only 2023 captain who isn’t on this list.) Bosa is back in. And the first-time 49ers captains: running backs Christian McCaffrey and Kyle Juszczyk. All eight of them have made the Pro Bowl recently. Seven of them (all of this list except Deebo) made it last year. And this list doesn’t even include the two other 49ers who made the Pro Bowl last year: Javon Hargrave and Charvarius Ward.
The 49ers have some depth, but if any of their top guys suffers a major injury or has a bad season, they’ll be in some trouble. The 49ers have refilled the coffers with a good 2024 draft, but it’ll be the veteran stars who determine whether they can finally cash in with a Super Bowl victory. I’m not the first one to say this, but it feels a little bit like the later stages of the Jim Harbaugh 49ers era, when Patrick Willis, Frank Gore and Michael Crabtree were leading the team through deep playoff runs almost every year. But then it all broke apart during the 2014 season and the 49ers took a long time — starting with the eventual hiring of Shanahan and John Lynch in 2017 — to put it back together.
Is this a last-chance season for this era of the 49ers? Not if Purdy establishes himself as a perennial Pro Bowler, Bosa stays healthy and Brandon Aiyuk is truly worth $30 million a year for many more seasons. But this is the start of their last-chance era, I’d say, at the tail end of the prime years for Williams, Kittle, McCaffrey and a few others.
The 49ers have been very consistent over the last three seasons — double-digit victory totals, two playoff wins every year, a bitter loss to end it all each time. So the 49ers’ 2024 season shouldn’t be very difficult to predict, unless there are injuries or career freefalls. And my annual game-by-game 49ers season prediction remains pretty stable, too.
As George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey and more enter the tail end of their primes, the 49ers’ “last-chance era” has begun. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
Last year, I predicted that the 49ers would go 12-5. They went 12-5. I probably won’t hit it on the button this time. Here are some of the variables I weighed:
• The 49ers, like all NFC teams in this alternating process, will have nine home games and eight road games due to the 17-game schedule. The last time they had the extra home game, the 49ers went 13-4 in 2022, winning their final 10 regular-season games in a row. I don’t foresee a duplication of that feat this season.
The 49ers were actually better on the road last year (7-2) than at home (5-3), but less travel and fewer games on artificial turf is better than more of both.
• The 49ers have a minus-21-day rest differential, as tabulated by Warren Sharp — that means they have 21 fewer days of rest to play their 17 games than their opponents do for those games, which is the worst rest imbalance in the league. Is this bound to wear the 49ers down a little? Yes, we all saw what happened in the middle of last season, when the 49ers lost three in a row against fresher teams. They had a cumulative minus-20 rest disadvantage last season, also the worst in the league.
But the 49ers went 7-1 after their bye week last year (before they lost a meaningless Week 18 game with the No. 1 seed already wrapped up), so rest disadvantages can be survived.
• The 49ers only have four artificial turf games on the schedule — at the L.A. Rams and Seattle Seahawks in the division and at Minnesota and Buffalo outside of the NFC West. It’s not great for the 49ers’ ligaments and soft tissue to have two of those games stacked in Weeks 2 and 3 (at SoFi Stadium and U.S. Bank Stadium with the Week 2 game coming off a short week after the 49ers’ home opener on Monday night). But if the 49ers can get through those two games relatively unscathed, 12 of their final 14 games will be on grass, obviously including all of them at Levi’s Stadium.
Of course, everybody remembers that the 49ers’ 2020 season essentially got wrecked in Week 2 at MetLife Stadium against the New York Jets when Bosa suffered a torn ACL and Jimmy Garoppolo, Raheem Mostert and Solomon Thomas all also suffered leg injuries on that artificial field.
• The NFC West seems to be improved across the board, which will definitely make things trickier for the 49ers, who went a combined 11-1 in division play the past two seasons.
I suspect this year will be more like 2021, when the 49ers went 2-4 in division play and actually finished third, behind the Rams and Arizona Cardinals, but made it into the playoffs as the No. 2 wild card. I’m not predicting that order in the NFC West standings, but I specifically think that road games in Southern California and Seattle will be very, very tough for the 49ers this year.
OK, let’s go through it game by game:
A nice start
In recent years, the 49ers have alternated excellent starts (8-0 in 2019 and 5-0 last season) with far clunkier beginnings (3-3 in 2020, 2-4 in 2021, 3-4 in 2022). They made it to the Super Bowl after both of the fast openings and made it to the NFC Championship Game in two of the slower-start seasons, so you can make your own conclusions based on what I’m predicting in these games.
I’ll guess that the 49ers get a turbo boost from all the recent emotional events, from Williams and Aiyuk coming back to practice after long contractual stare-downs to Ricky Pearsall amazingly escaping major injury after getting shot in the chest. I’ll say that they’ll beat the Jets pretty handily on Monday night at Levi’s then, after a short week, outclass the Vikings and old friend Sam Darnold in Minneapolis for a 2-0 start.
The 49ers could be a little weary when they fly to Southern California in Week 3, so I’ll predict that they’ll lose to the Rams. But I think the 49ers will take care of the New England Patriots and the Cardinals back in Santa Clara in Weeks 4 and 5, to get them to 4-1 and looking as strong as ever in the NFC playoff race.
The Los Angeles Rams and the rest of the NFC West figure to be a tougher challenge in 2024 than a season ago. (Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
Three big games to get to the Week 9 bye
The Seahawks are always tough to play in Seattle, and this time the 49ers have to face them on a short week, thanks to the Thursday night scheduling. I’ll pick the 49ers to lose this one. They’ll have some extra days to prepare for a home game against the darn Chiefs, but oops, Kansas City will be coming off a bye, and Andy Reid is just about untouchable with an extra week to prepare. I’ll predict another 49ers loss in Week 7, to fall to 4-3.
That’d be a very understandable 4-3, but I’m sure there will be alarm bells on all the national TV shows, anyway, leading up to the 49ers’ home game against the Cowboys in Week 8. Even though Dallas will be coming off a bye going into this game, Mike McCarthy hasn’t matched up well with Shanahan in a big game, and I won’t predict an end to that streak here. That’ll steady things for the 49ers and get them to 5-3 heading into their well-placed bye week.
Rough road
This is where it gets tougher for the 49ers, who play their next three of four on the road as things start to get a little colder in the Midwest and Northeast.
But I’ll guess they start this run out well, because the 49ers usually play at top speed coming out of the bye. I’ll predict that in Week 10 they’ll take down the Buccaneers in Tampa Bay. The 49ers will be back home against the Seahawks in Week 11, which I think is a coin-flip game because the Seahawks will be (guess what!) coming off a bye. I’ll say the Seahawks complete a regular-season sweep and knock the 49ers down to 6-4.
I’ve got the 49ers’ game in Green Bay in Week 12 as another coin-flip game in the rematch of the NFC divisional round game last January. For this one, I’ll lean to the 49ers because they know the next one could be even worse and even colder. And yes, in Week 13 I have the 49ers losing in Buffalo (hello, the Bills are coming off a bye) to drop to 7-5.
Stretch-run momentum
OK, the worst of it is over. Probably. Sometimes there are extreme home letdowns after getting through a very rough road stretch, but I’ll guess that the 49ers will fight through it and beat Chicago at Levi’s to get to 8-5. They’ll ride that momentum to a victory at Levi’s over the Rams — which might be essential for a division crown.
I think the Week 16 stop in Miami will be a great game, but probably a 49ers loss, to drop to 9-6. Then in an NFC Championship Game rematch with the Lions at Levi’s, I’ll guess that the 49ers will get it all together and beat Detroit again. And I’ll predict that the 49ers will finish off the regular season with a victory in Arizona to get to 3-3 in the division.
Yes, in our over/unders column last week, I predicted that the 49ers would go 10-7 this season. But that was before I went through this game by game and realized that the 49ers might have extreme motivation in the regular-season finale and the Cardinals might not. So I’ll say that the 49ers will win that game and finish 11-6, edging out the Seahawks for the NFC West title (which would be the 49ers’ third in a row) and picking up the third seed in the NFC playoff tournament.
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Christian McCaffrey taking the field before the divisional-round playoff game against Green Bay in January: Ryan Kang / Getty Images)
