All 49ers

How Losing the Super Bowl has Cost the 49ers Money

It's hard to quantify just how devastating it is to lose the Super Bowl in overtime.

Grant Cohn

Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan walks off the field after losing Super Bowl LVIII to the Kansas City Chiefs at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 11, 2024; Paradise, Nevada, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan walks off the field after losing Super Bowl LVIII to the Kansas City Chiefs at Allegiant Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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It's hard to quantify just how devastating it is to lose the Super Bowl in overtime.

The 49ers can tell themselves they're close to getting over the hump and they're nearly the best team in the NFL, and those things might be true. But only if they keep their team intact. They can't afford to lose or trade anyone important anyone important. And their players know it. Which is why so many players have asked for contract extensions this offseason. They're taking advantage of the 49ers' desperation to maintain their roster and standing as an elite team.

Teams that win Super Bowls aren't desperate. Teams that win Super Bowls can take hard lines with players who want expensive contract extensions. Teams that win Super Bowls can make drastic trades and remake their roster on the fly because they've proven they know what it takes to build a Super Bowl winner in the first place.

Just look at the Chiefs. They never let a player shake them down for money. They traded Tyreek Hill, Dee Ford and L'Jarius Sneed for crying out loud. And that's because everyone on their team other than Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Chris Jones is replaceable. They know which players are absolutely essential to winning Super Bowls.

The 49ers don't. They don't even know if their head coach, Kyle Shanahan, is good enough to win one. Which is why they're trying so hard and paying so much to keep their group together for one more year just to find out if it's good enough.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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