SANTA CLARA, Calif. – And finally, after another postseason heartbreak, after an emotionally draining offseason, after the drama-filled holdouts and the fierce wave of injuries and personal tragedies, after the firing of a star player and, with a With the team’s hopes on the line, an angry and surreal blow, the San Francisco 49ers’ 2024 season ultimately collapsed under its own weight.
Buried beneath the wreckage, barely able to speak at an audible volume, lay Kyle Shanahan – the man most to do with the 49ers’ shortcomings, and the biggest culprit behind a last-ditch effort to extend an era that seemed doomed. the start last February.
Shanahan, the Niners’ eighth-year coach, stood behind a lectern after the loss that all but mathematically eliminated the defending NFC champions from the playoffs, a defeat at the hands of his fiercest professional rival. With a 12-6 win at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday night, Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams (8-6) boosted their playoff hopes while exposing the 49ers (6-8) as a team that misses the mark. precision and unity was lacking to continue playing. the first weekend of January.
Ultimately, with desperation in the rainy Northern California skies, Shanahan’s offense failed to produce a single touchdown, San Francisco’s special teams were generally sloppy, and an unusually strong defensive effort was marred by veteran linebacker De’Vondre Campbell Sr. ‘s stunning refusal to enter the game when called upon in the third quarter.
All of that falls on Shanahan – that’s why he’s in the big chair – and he made no attempt to run from it.
“Not good enough,” Shanahan said of the offensive effort he coordinated Thursday, though the words applied to everything about this loss and this challenging season.
Those words also served as an epitaph for a six-season stretch in which the 49ers suffered two excruciating Super Bowl losses to the Kansas City Chiefs, lost a pair of tough NFC Championship Games (including one against McVay’s Rams) and assembled a loaded roster. featuring some of the most talented and resilient players in the league.
Together they built a formidable foundation, won many major competitions and sometimes felt indomitable.
What we witnessed Thursday night was the rubble of the NFL — and the group charged with cleaning it up and getting it up will look very different in 2025 and beyond.
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A tale of two 49ers linebackers: Dre Greenlaw enters, De’Vondre Campbell leaves – abruptly
“There’s been a dark cloud hanging over us all season,” veteran cornerback Charvarius Ward told me after the game. “This will be a good offseason for this team to regroup, refocus and try to reignite the spark.”
Ward, a second-team All-Pro in 2023, is headed to unrestricted free agency in March and is one of several 49ers bigs who may not be on the roster next year.
“I don’t know if I’ll be back,” Ward continued, “but I know this team will still be great with or without me.”
That remains to be seen, as Thursday’s faceplant — and this entire season, really — has underscored just how different this 49ers team is from its immediate predecessors.
Again: not good enough. Realistically not even close.
The NFL is a production company, and Shanahan — who, along with general manager John Lynch, put this group together and is charged with coaching it — will have to bear the stain of his team’s continued underperformance. The Niners have just two wins over opponents with winning records (the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and suffered three brutal losses to division foes after squandering late leads.
On Thursday, with a chance to stay in the NFC West race, they fell woefully short, producing a low-light reel in the process.
Wide receiver Deebo Samuel Sr., who complained on social media earlier this week about not getting the ball enough, took a brutal drop that likely cost him the chance to reach the end zone for a game-changing score. The 49ers were penalized for two illegal formation penalties on punts. Shanahan, after Brock Purdy connected with tight end George Kittle on a 33-yard pass early in the game — against a defense that had given up 42 points to the Buffalo Bills four days earlier — turned strangely conservative and called three straight runs on the Rams territory and settled for a 53-yard field goal by Jake Moody. And Purdy, coming off his best game of the season, struggled in the rain (a recurring theme) and later threw a cheeky interception into the end zone with 5:20 to go and the 49ers in range for a tying field goal, essentially killing him. their chances.
Deebo Samuel got a chance to make a game-changing play for the 49ers. Instead, he dropped the ball. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
And amazingly, none of these blunders came close to being the most shameful moment of the evening. That was from Campbell, a veteran linebacker who signed in March as a placeholder for Dre Greenlaw — the passionate playmaker who tore his Achilles tendon running onto the field after a punt during the second quarter of Super Bowl LVIII, and who ultimately surrendered Thursday worked backwards. night to try to help save San Francisco’s season.
He almost did, before his body betrayed him. The 27-year-old enforcer, one of the sport’s most criminally underrated stars, picked up where he left off in last February’s Super Bowl, before the far-fetched injury that helped the Niners to defeat.
If Greenlaw had been rusty against the Rams, it would have made a lot of sense.
He wasn’t. On the contrary, he was the best player on the field.
Greenlaw had eight tackles, many of which were productive, sudden and violent, before leaving the game with tightness in his knees midway through the third quarter. At that point, Campbell was the next man up.
However, Campbell was not exactly a man.
Apparently angry about losing his job to Greenlaw — hardly a shocking development for anyone in the 49ers locker room, or beyond — Campbell, according to Shanahan and countless players, refused to participate in the game.
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49ers’ De’Vondre Campbell refuses to play and leaves the TNF game in the third quarter
“He said he didn’t want to play today,” Shanahan said. Campbell, who was eventually sent off the field to the locker room — almost certainly never to return — was described as “selfish” by Ward and Kittle during post-match interviews.
“That was his plan,” Ward told me. “He had made a decision. I mean, it’s crazy. He’s not a better player than Dre. You saw that today – (Greenlaw) is the engine of our defense, the guy who starts everything for us. But you could see it (Campbell’s decision not to play) coming for a while.”
The combination of Campbell’s departure from his teammates and the resilience of players like Ward and rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was stunning.
Pearsall, who was shot in the chest during a robbery shortly before the start of the season, missed six games before returning and making his NFL debut. Ward missed three games after his daughter, Amani Joy, died in October, shortly before her second birthday. (Amani Joy was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect that required surgery.)
After Thursday’s game, Ward told me about the trauma he and his family endured. He did his best to reaffirm his commitment to his teammates while acknowledging that football is not the main force in his life right now.
“It has been difficult for me personally to go to work every day and every game – even to practice or go to meetings,” he admitted. “I almost left a few times. S-, I know fans probably hate me (for saying that), but f- it, it’s real life. It’s bigger than football. This is definitely the hardest time of my life.”
In that context, a football team’s lost season pales in comparison. Yet falling short still hurts. Players and coaches can dedicate an extreme amount of energy, intensity and dedication to the cause, and when they don’t achieve their goals, they grieve. And that especially applies to the head coach.
In the coming weeks and months, Shanahan will have to be honest with himself as he thinks about how it all went wrong, and how he and Lynch can try to make things right in 2025, and in the years to come.
In the meantime, there are three games left to play, none of which are likely to matter. While noting that the 49ers are still technically in playoff contention, reaching the postseason would require a series of wildly unlikely outcomes, and Shanahan acknowledged that the dream of finally winning a championship with this incarnation of his team is actually over. “They say mathematically we still have a chance,” he said. “I’m not really concerned with that at the moment. … I want to come back and play better football and challenge the character of our team.”
Clearly shaken, Shanahan almost looked as if he had seen a ghost – which was metaphorically true. On the sidelines Thursday night was the coach’s former quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, now a backup to the Rams’ Matthew Stafford. And of course, there was McVay, a former Shanahan assistant who has since challenged him for his supremacy as a coach, captured the Lombardi Trophy that eluded Shanahan and, after hitting rock bottom in 2022, deftly rebuilt the Rams in the past has given shape. two seasons.
Last Sunday, McVay engineered an offensive outburst that led to a 44-42 win over the Bills and kept the Rams chasing the Seahawks (8-5) in the division race. On Thursday, after LA cornerback Darious Williams picked up Purdy’s overthrown deep ball for Jauan Jennings in the end zone with 5:20 to go, McVay and his players became the closers that Shanahan and his 49ers had struggled with all season.
When the Rams took over from their own 20-yard line up 9-6 with 5:20 to go, McVay had no intention of giving the ball back.
“That’s the responsibility I felt,” he said as he walked from the visitors’ locker room to the team bus late Thursday night. “Now (the 49ers) have a say in that too.”
Soon the Rams silenced them. Thirteen plays, 69 yards and just two third downs later, Joshua Karty kicked his fourth field goal to make it a six-point game. Only 20 seconds remained and the 49ers’ last, desperate gasp ended with Purdy being sacked by Christian Rozeboom on his own 44-yard line with no time left — in the game or, for all intents and purposes, in the season. Or the era.
“This was not an easy win,” McVay said. “Their defense was really good; they flew around all night. And the elements made it very tough, especially in the first half. But this is a mentally strong team. I like our resilience. I like that we can win in different ways. I love what we are made of.”
In the past, those were sentiments Shanahan could honestly express about his team. If he is honest, they will no longer apply in 2024. Shanahan’s players and assistant coaches carry a lot of responsibility, but above all, the responsibility lies with him.
In 2024, the 49ers weren’t good enough, and neither was he.
(Top photo: Kelley L Cox / Imagn Images)