The unceremonious end of the 49ers 2022/2023 season, the ensuing drama, and mailbag requests
The season didn't end how we wanted it to, but it was fun while it lasted. On to 2023/24 season with renewed hope.
First and foremost, I want to do a regular mailbag-style article so for the offseason, please email or comment with your questions on here or on Twitter. Anything related to the 49ers: something you saw this season but don’t know what it was, scheme related questions, draft questions, free agency, etc. Ask away and I will do my best to answer! Now, to the good stuff.
Post NFCCG and Super Bowl week Drama
In case you have been living under a rock, the 49ers WILL NOT be playing in the Super Bowl this weekend. As disappointing as it is, nothing is more disappointing than the coming off-season, especially because until the 5th play of the first drive versus the Eagles, it sure seemed as if maybe the 49ers would be playing in another Super Bowl. Not sure about all of you, but I was able to process the loss throughout the remainder of the game as Josh Johnson tried to lift a lifeless offense into a competitive game.
And for a little bit, it seemed like he might. But things just kind of fell apart as Johnson took delay of game penalties, fumbled, and then got knocked of the game on the opening drive of the third quarter. Maybe I was hopeful because these games are never really over until they’re over but in the back of my mind, like everyone else, we knew in the first quarter it was all but over.
Stranger things haven’t happened because that was probably the strangest and most unlikely of all events to happen that we’ve ever witnessed in the NFL in our own lifetime. Heck, even 75 year old Mike Shanahan told his son he had never seen anything like that. By Sunday night I was over it.
49ers players entered the offseason rightly upset and bitter over never really having a chance in the game when Brock Purdy exited, only further compounded by Josh Johnson’s exit. Brandon Aiyuk’s interview with Brad Graham of the #1 49ers content creator and social media page, TheSFNiners, told him in a 90-minute interview that:
“We have a talented football team. We have, hands down, the best football team in the league. Hands down…But that's what makes it so sick about this one because we feel like everything we did from that point on...just what we did to the league, how we just played on tape, I firmly believe we put fear in the opponent's hearts. When they had to come to play San Francisco, the 49ers, we felt like it was our time. We felt like it was our time and for that to get cut short, it's sickening.”
He further continued that “If I was a betting man, which I am not…hypothetically speaking, if I were to bet on this game, I would take everything that I own, get it in cash and put my money on the Kansas City Chiefs. Like I said, I’m not going to talk about Philly but…”
“Look at me, I’m sitting on the couch, I have no room to talk about nobody playing next week. But like I said, I got the Chiefs. I think the Chiefs…I just, I don’t know. [The Eagles] got their hands full. I don’t know fully about that defense. I don’t know. They talk about them being a good defense, I’m not too sure.
I think the pass game, this Kansas City pass game will expose what we thought we were going to be able to expose before some unfortunate circumstances happened. So we’ll see. But like I said, you gotta get lucky to win a Super Bowl. And they just got extremely lucky last week, so who’s to say they can’t do it twice. Like I said, I’m not going to speak too much on it.”
Jimmie Ward, in an instagram live Monday after the NFC Championship game, who’s uncertain future with the 49ers remains a mystery, stated that:
“DeVonta Smith and AJ Brown…When I catch DeVonta Smith, because I’m going back to safety next year, and whenever I play safety, I’ma…Well, I ain’t gonna say that much. I’ma just wait. I’ma be fine. You know, talk that talk. I ain’t gonna talk that much talk on here. But when I do go back to safety, yeah, somebody gotta pay. And hopefully both of ’em. Both of ’em gotta pay.”
Deebo Samuel, who has done several interviews this week on the Super Bowl’s Radio Row in Phoenix, fielded several questions about the game too, where he didn’t mince words on Mad Dog Sports either:
“Just look how well our defense was actually playing, keeping Jalen [Hurts] in the pocket, which he doesn't like to do at all. So the [Eagles] offense wasn't doing anything. Our defense was doing what they were supposed to and I feel like if Brock was in as our quarterback and how our offense moves, I don't think it would have been close.”
And of course, Robbie Gould had to give his opinion on Jalen Hurts, stating that “If you make Jalen Hurts play quarterback, you’re going to have probably a pretty solid day on defense.”
Gould’s comments were not only wrong, they were just unnecessary. If you make Jalen Hurts become a pure dropback quarterback, and he wasn’t very good against the 49ers, you can make him struggle big time doing that. But, and this is why is mostly doesn’t matter, but this Eagles team scores points in so many ways that stopping Hurts doesn’t really equate to stopping the offense as a whole.
The Eagles averaged less than 4 yards per play and less than 4 yards per rush against the 49ers, and Hurts only had 121 yards passing. They still scored 31 points in a death by a thousand paper cuts style of football.
With the exception of Gould’s comments, Aiyuk, Deebo, and Ward’s comments should be old news. Instead, Philly fans and Philly reporters reporting on this stuff, and the national media highlighting it as well, have spent the end of this week dredging up old comments and it’s both hilarious and sad at the same time because it represents the sad state of affairs surrounding sports media writ large: generating clicks.
There’s a game this weekend, between two #1 seeds, both 14-3 teams, with a head coach who called Philadelphia home for more than a decade, a young up and coming quarterback who’s career ups and downs from college to the NFL are as remarkable as they come, and perhaps the most talented quarterback we’ve ever seen on the other side playing in his third super bowl in five seasons, and all anyone can talk about, at least on social media, is how much the 49ers are sore losers. Which is also supremely weird because they keep getting asked about it.
Of course they’re upset at the outcome, what NFL players wouldn’t be?
Steve Wilks hired as the 49ers defensive coordinator
The other significant 49ers news, which hardly got any attention among fans online, is that the 49ers hired Steve Wilks to be the defensive coordinator. Personally, Vic Fangio was my first choice but Wilks is still a tremendously underrated hire. His ability to turn around the Panthers this past season, even after Christian McCaffrey was traded to the 49ers, was pretty damn impressive.
Fangio would’ve installed a different scheme, one that has traditionally given the 49ers a world of problems when they played the Bears, Rams, Chargers, and Eagles in recent seasons. Instead, the 49ers opted to stay go with continuity and familiarity over a wholesale change.
I’ll have more on the defensive scheme and what Wilks will do as a defensive coordinator, but briefly, he’ll likely base out of 4-3 and play the majority of his downs in nickel.
All things considered, Wilks runs as close to the same scheme and does a lot of the same stuff situationally that the 49ers did under DeMeco Ryans that the hire makes sense.
If I’m Kyle Shanahan right now, I want as little disruption on that side of the ball as possible while the offense and quarterback situation gets sorted out. And Wilks does a lot of similar schematic things that the 49ers already do. It should in theory, be a seamless transition.
Speaking of DeMeco Ryans, he’s now the Houston Texans head coach. I would expect 49ers coaching staff to join him but one coach that will not be is Kris Kocurek, who has agreed to stay on as the defensive line coach.
The state of the 49ers franchise quarterbacks
Lastly, overshadowing the Wilks hire was the story that came out about Jimmy Garoppolo being physically able to dress as the backup quarterback but that he elected not to out of fear of putting his future in jeopardy and risking injury to try and win a Super Bowl for a team that has largely tried to shed him at every possible junction over the last 3 seasons.
Nobody really knows if that’s the truth and just 10 days prior to the game, he was seen walking around the facility in a walking boot. But for whatever it’s worth, there does appear to be at least some tension between Shanahan and Garoppolo.
Tim Kawakami, speaking about it on KNBR this past week, stated that:
“It just kind of lasted a year longer than everybody thought it would. They went back to him and then he got hurt again and then when they maybe were hoping that he’d be the backup and god, it would have helped them if he was the backup, he’s not available and they go to Josh Johnson. If you just add it all up like that…
It’s just more like [from Shanahan’s perspective], ‘can you be available?’
And I think Jimmy said, ‘you know, it’s not gonna happen’ and Kyle’s like ‘goddammit, like I could have had a quarterback here that really would have helped us win that game and you’re not available,’ as has happened throughout your 49ers career.
I’m just supposing, again, but again, me supposing it has not been knocked down by anybody, and there are people who will reach out and knock it down.”
If Jimmy had been able to suit up, it would have given the 49ers, from their perspective, as good of a chance as any to get back to the Super Bowl. The game was well within reach with Josh Johnson and even tied at 7-7 at one point until very late in the 2nd quarter, right before the wheels came off.
From Jimmy’s perspective, that’s a big risk to take coming off of a foot injury, where right now he could be in the mix for a lucrative contract. We thought this last season too. When he derailed the 49ers offseason plans and had surgery to repair his shoulder, he also inadvertently derailed his own plans and he was never able to be traded. It ended up working out for the 49ers and Jimmy. Until he got hurt again. Now he’s thinking about his own career, which is understandable.
The problem, as he probably saw it, is that he’s already an injury risk for a future team. Why, from his perspective, would he add to that with the potential to get hurt again in the final 2 games of the NFL season? Winning a championship might have helped his stock or it might not have, and that’s a calculated risk he was not willing to take.
Purdy and Lance injury updates
Whether Jimmy leaves in free agency, or can be persuaded to stay with the 49ers, it doesn’t change the fact that entering the offseason, both Trey Lance and Brock Purdy are injured. Lance is obviously weeks away, we think, from being cleared to resume running and then normal training to include throwing and dropbacks and should be fine by OTAs. Purdy is scheduled to have surgery on February 22nd on his throwing arm and his status is uncertain for training camp and the preseason.
The interesting thing about Purdy now is he himself is saying that he could end up having a hybrid repair of the elbow UCL tendon which include a reconstruction and an internal brace on the ligament. Originally it was thought he was going through with the internal brace procedure. None of this is certain right now until the doctor cuts him open and determines what needs to be done. Here’s what he told KNBR’s Papa & Lund radio show earlier this week:
“Everyone’s saying it would be the best for just my career moving forward to get the surgery and get the repair with an internal brace. Still, there could be some question as to getting a hybrid surgery, which is reconstruction with the internal brace.
So we’re going into it thinking the repair with the internal brace, for sure. All the surgeons have said that and that’s what we’re hoping for, and get a six-month recovery in and be ready for camp.”
What this means entering camp is anyone’s guess but for now it appears the job is Purdy’s to lose, as George Kittle told the media this week. Purdy could be ready in five months or not until sometime in September.
What this means for Lance is that, barring any kind of setback, that he’s going to be QB1 in OTAs, minicamp, and at the start of training camp. He acknowledges this and welcomes it, telling Rich Eisen:
“Everyone saw what Brock did. Brock doesn’t just come in and play that well, and I just get handed something out of the blue. And I don’t expect that or want that, but I truly believe, yeah, I just want an opportunity, to compete. That’s all I wanted going into the offseason.”
Whatever happens, this isn’t exactly the ideal situation for the 49ers to be in, going into year 7 with really no answers about who the franchise quarterback will be. No quarterback in the Shanahan era has played two full seasons but when they have had stability, mostly with Jimmy Garoppolo, they have made the playoffs and the Super Bowl.
They were extremely lucky to have accomplished what they accomplished this season with three quarterbacks and that is unlikely to happen again. Football has too much variance to stay the same year to year.
Having Shanahan certainly cuts down on that variance due to the type of coach he is and what he’s able to get from his players and the 49ers offensive scheme. But this team as it’s currently constructed has maybe a 2 or 3 year window to get back and win a Super Bowl before the big money contracts start to come due again and tough decisions have to be made on the future of their core group of players. They need to find a franchise quarterback and find stability.
In the coming weeks and months I will be taking the time to publish in-depth quality pieces on the 49ers and may do some breakdowns of other Shanahan tree offenses as well as some draft stuff. Like I mentioned at the start of this article, please drop some questions you’d like answered, could be anything you had questions on from this season that you saw, draft analysis, or anything 49ers-related really. Welcome to the 2023 offseason.