The 2018 Patriots are the only team in the past 52 years to win a Super Bowl a year after losing in the title game. And the 2024 San Francisco 49ers don’t appear poised to join their company this season.
Eight months after losing Super Bowl LVIII, the 49ers have resumed losing. A lot. They are 3-4 and coming off a 28-18 home defeat to the Chiefs that offered evidence they would likely lose to Kansas City again if they met in the Super Bowl for the third time in six seasons in February.
The enduring image from a game in which the Chiefs led by 16 points with three minutes left: Patrick Mahomes standing over Malik Mustapha in the end zone with the 49ers safety on his back after slamming into the QB’s left shoulder on a 1-yard touchdown run, Mahomes resembling Muhammad Ali and Mustapha playing Sonny Liston.
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It not only symbolized the Chiefs’ dominance — they are 5-0 against the 49ers since 2018 — but also the beat-up 49ers current state as a non-playoff team if the season ended today.
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Since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, 33 of 53 Super Bowl losers didn’t win a playoff game the next season — 15 of the runner-ups missed the postseason altogether. The last team to miss the playoffs a season after losing in the Super Bowl: The 2020 49ers, who went 6-10 while they were ravaged by injuries to frontline players.
Four years later, attrition helps explain why the 49ers are threatening to follow in their footsteps. But there are other factors.
The four biggest reason the defending NFC champs already have four losses, one fewer than last year’s total:
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Injuries
The scales have tilted a season after the 49ers were remarkably healthy.
Last season, the 49ers had 10 players voted to the Pro Bowl and/or named a first- or second-team All-Pro. The total games missed due to injuries by those standouts: six.
This season, those 10 players have already combined to miss 12 games. And that total will rise to at least 32 with defensive tackle Javon Hargrave and wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk out for the season.
The offense that ranks 27th in the NFL red-zone touchdown percentage after leading the league in 2023 hasn’t played a snap with running back Christian McCaffrey, the reigning Offensive Player of the Year who remains sidelined with Achilles tendinitis.
And the defense that’s tied for 14th in the NFL in sacks has played the past four games without Hargrave, who was tied for second in sacks (25.5) among interior defensive linemen from 2021-23.
The aforementioned injuries don’t include linebacker Dre Greenlaw (Achilles), a tone-setter who has yet to play in 2024 after missing just two games last year. Greenlaw has been replaced by De’Vondre Campbell, who has a team-high five missed tackles, according to ProFootballReference.com, and has allowed 22 completions on 27 attempts in coverage.
Special Teams
The 49ers have a just-don’t-screw-it-up approach to special teams, which comes from head coach Kyle Shanahan, who has said his expectations for those units are different than those for offense and defense.
“You’d like to build a team to where you don’t feel you have to return a kick, a punt or have a fake kick or a fake punt — you don’t have to rely on something like that to get a win,” Shanahan said earlier this month. “I like to feel that you can do it between the offense and defense of just beating someone.”
The 49ers’ special teams are a reason they are getting beat this season.
The 49ers are allowing 18.4 yards per punt return, worst in the NFL. They are allowing 33.2 yards per kickoff return, which ranks 29th. They have allowed a blocked punt, surrendered a successful fake punt, fumbled a kickoff return (they lost it), muffed a punt (they recovered it) and had two kickers injured when forced to make tackles on long kickoff returns.
Their Week 3 upset loss to the Rams was a special-teams fiasco that ended with the 49ers allowing a 38-yard punt return that set up Los Angeles’ game-winning field goal. On Sunday against the Chiefs, they missed an extra point and allowed a 55-yard punt return that led to a 30-yard TD drive.
Defensive line
On Sunday, the Chiefs put away the 49ers with a 12-play, 80-yard touchdown drive that included 10 runs — eight between the tackles. In the 49ers’ 24-23 loss to the Cardinals in Week 5, running back James Conner had 72 yards on 12 carries and broke eight tackles as Arizona erased a 10-point deficit with two game-ending, smash-mouth scoring drives.
The point? The 49ers’ front four is no longer all that.
The cost-cutting release of Arik Armstead, Hargrave’s torn triceps and the free-agent exit of underrated defensive end Clelin Ferrell are among the reasons the 49ers are more susceptible to getting gashed on the ground and less able to harass QBs.
They’re ranked 12th in rushing yards allowed per game. And 13th in yards allowed per rushing attempt. And 18th in QB hits.
Not awful. Just ordinary. And that’s the problem: The 49ers have invested gobs of draft capital and millions in free agency for that unit to be elite.
“We’ve put a lot of resources there,” general manager John Lynch said last year. “Those guys need to be not just good. They need to be really good, and dominant and wreak havoc and all those things.”
Bad vibes
Last year’s 49ers were confident and angry after their 2022 season ended with a 31-7 loss to the Eagles in the NFC Championship Game, a contest they were convinced they would have won if they didn’t run out of healthy QBs.
Their swagger was captured by safety Tashaun Gipson’s message after their season-opening, 30-7 stomping of the Steelers.
“We’re the baddest guys on the planet,” Gipson boasted.
These 49ers? They seem swagger-less after their 2023 season ended with them losing a 10-point lead in the Super Bowl, squandering what might have been their best chance to win a title with their current corps.
“Super Bowls aren’t given,” linebacker Fred Warner said two days after that loss. “You’ve got to take them in the moments when they’re there. And we didn’t. And we had such a team to do it. We had such a great opportunity.”
Since that loss, the 49ers had a training camp dominated by contract standoffs and have endured two mystifying losses to sub-.500 teams (Rams, Cardinals) in which they blew double-digit, fourth-quarter leads. In their only victory against a winning team — the Seahawks — they came close to blowing a 20-point, third-quarter advantage before steadying themselves in a 36-24 win.
They are the defending NFC champions, a battle-tested group that’s won countless big games since 2019, but Warner didn’t hesitate when asked if he feared the 49ers were about to come unglued again in Seattle.
“A thousand percent,” he said. “It sucks, but yes. It was something that felt familiar, for sure.”
It’s impossible to quantify, but it’s fair to wonder if the cumulative effect of three straight deep playoff runs, all of which ended in uniquely heartbreaking fashion, have taken a physical and emotional toll. The 49ers have played nine playoff games — more than half a regular season — in the past three seasons with a roster that includes left tackle Trent Williams, 36, fullback Kyle Juszczyk, 33, and tight end George Kittle, 31.