SANTA CLARA — The clock is ticking on 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch.
No, their seats aren’t warm — they just signed long contract extensions before the season.
But after yet another stinging Super Bowl loss — the team’s second to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in four years — both men know that they have just two years to get over the hump and win the franchise’s sixth Lombardi Trophy.
Shanahan and Lynch are halfway through the lifespan of the greatest gift any NFL organization can have, shy of having Mahomes: Brock Purdy is an excellent quarterback — the best Shanahan has coached in San Francisco — and he’s on a rookie contract.
In a league where the salary cap never seems quite high enough and starting quarterbacks like Mahomes make over $50 million a season, Purdy is the luxury of all luxuries. He’s set to make $1 million next season and $1.2 million the year after that. Such minuscule numbers make building a team easy.
The Niners must take advantage of this window. Once it closes, building a Super Bowl contender becomes exponentially more difficult.
The team’s braintrust thought it had done enough this season, and was just a few plays from being proven correct.
But this isn’t horseshoes or hand grenades.
That game is now ancient history. The page now must turn to the 2024 season.
It’s a season that started the second Mecole Hardman scored the game-winning touchdown. There’s no time for the weary — or heartbroken — to rest.
The NFL draft combine is at the end of this month.
Free agency looms next month.
The NFL Draft is in April, and offseason team activities are in May.
And some key decisions must be made before it all starts in earnest again.
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Shanahan was a little rough around the edges Tuesday but in better shape than his last post-Super Bowl loss presser in 2020. He said that he had not yet watched the tape of Sunday’s game, nor had he talked to any of his coaches.
But who will be coordinating the defense next year?
First-year defensive coordinator Steve Wilks struggled. Adapting his preferred scheme to the scheme the Niners had run the last six years was clunky, at best. His low-energy leadership didn’t fit, either. Halfway through the season, Shanahan had to force Wilks to leave the coaches’ booth and call the defense from the sidelines, where he regularly sat by himself near the coolers, looking at his tablet computer.
While players like Fred Warner gave Wilks votes of confidence Tuesday, Shanahan didn’t do the same.
When first asked if Wilks would return as defensive coordinator, Shanahan avoided the question:
“That’s stuff that we’ll talk about a ton as this week goes. [We’ll] talk about a ton [about it this] offseason — where we want our team to be, our defense, or offense special teams,” Shanahan said. “That’s a lot of conversations.”
When asked about Wilks returning once again – in an unquestionably direct manner this time — Shanahan refused to give a firm affirmative:
“I haven’t talked to anybody yet,” Shanahan said. “I expect all our coaches to be back.”
Shanahan has an out with Wilks, if he wants it. And he might just take it.
But no matter who coordinates the defense, it will have roster holes going into 2024.
(The Niners’ offense, save for some backup tight ends and restricted free agent Jauan Jennings, is under contract for next season.)
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Not only do the Niners have missing spots on the depth chart, they will likely be without key players for at least the start of next season.
The Niners have one defensive end on the roster to play opposite Nick Bosa for next season — soon-to-be second-year player Robert Beal. They will need to attack that position in free agency. And while Bosa said he wants Chase Young to return, free agent Clelin Ferrell (who missed the postseason with a knee injury) is likely a higher priority.
The Niners will need to add a new nickelback or cornerback this offseason, too. Deommodore Lenoir was a breakout player this season, but he can’t play both spots simultaneously. Logan Ryan, a safety signed while on a Disney Cruise mid-season, played nickelback for the Niners in the Super Bowl.
And unless Dre Greenlaw embraces Aaron Rodgers’ plan and floats into the mystic, he cannot be counted upon for the 2024 season. Achilles injuries are brutal — particularly for a player whose game is predicated on explosion.
The Niners will likely be without defensive tackle Arik Armstead for at least the start of training camp, too. He said Tuesday that he tore the meniscus in his right knee in Week 10 at Philadelphia. He’ll undergo surgery this offseason.
“I thought my season was over,” Armstead said.
Pair that with his plantar fasciitis, and the big man is a big question mark for 2024.
These are the perils of playing 20-something games a year, with the final games taking the largest physical toll. The NFL is still a game of attrition. The Niners thought after their last Super Bowl loss they’d have countless additional cracks at winning it all in the years to come. Four years later, and that same optimism has justly waned. The 49ers still have great players, but they are all-in on some guys who now have some serious miles on the odometer.
The good news for the 49ers is that they’ll have 11 draft picks this spring. For a team that struggled with depth, this needs to be Lynch’s best class since arriving in Santa Clara.
“You have those guys contribute when you have as many high-priced players as we have,” Lynch said.
Still, it’s not all on the draft class. The Niners can also create massive salary cap space, should they decide they want it.
Yes, contrary to national reports, it is not “impossible” for the Niners to keep their core players together.
The Niners can easily keep wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk, Purdy’s favorite target. They might even be able to sign another impact free agent, à la Javon Hargrave last offseason or Charvarius Ward after the 2021 season.
With simple restructurings, the Niners can clear upwards of $80 million in salary cap space — the seventh-most in the NFL, per Over The Cap. They’ll also roll over salary cap space from this season.
So yes, this band will stick together, if that’s what Shanahan and Lynch want, and all signs point to that being the case.
“There’s some challenges. I think we’re set up to do that,” Lynch said. “There’s a way to get it done… Of course, we want a guy like Brandon Aiyuk to be a part of it.”
“My job is just getting going,” Lynch said. “Just talking about it, I’m getting excited.”
But can this band — this core group of players — get over the hump?
“It’s not a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when,’” Warner said.
If only it were so binary. If only the clock weren’t ticking.
At some point, the 49ers’ starting quarterback will need to be paid more than an NFL rounding error, whether that be Purdy or someone else.
At some point, even with the Niners handling the salary cap as well as any team in the league, the bills will come due on the team’s top players, and the core will need to change.
And at some point, the weight of disappointment and regret will become too heavy.
It was a weight that, along with the end of the world and a plague of injuries, buried the Niners the year after their last Super Bowl loss: The 2020 Niners won six games and finished in last place in the NFC West.
The lesson was clear: Don’t mess around with that weight — it can bury you.
And that weight, while distributed across the organization, now weighs most heavily on Shanahan, who has now lost all three Super Bowls he hass coached, including the only two Super Bowls to go to overtime.
The external perception is that he can’t win the big one.
“You’d love to fix perception,” Shanahan said. “I know if I fix perception, that means I did everything I wanted to do… which is win a damn Super Bowl.”
But until he does, that perception is going nowhere.
And it will last a lot longer than this 49ers’ core.
