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Is there Reason to Believe the 49ers will be Better Next Season?

The 49ers arguably are the biggest disappointment in the NFL this season.

Grant Cohn

Dec 12, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on the sideline against the Los Angeles Rams during the fourth quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Dec 12, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on the sideline against the Los Angeles Rams during the fourth quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
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The 49ers arguably are the biggest disappointment in the NFL this season.

They were supposed to be Super Bowl contenders. To be fair, they've had lots of injuries. But still, they've been favored to win all but two of their games this season. And yet, they're 6-8. Their quarterback, Brock Purdy, is playing like Jimmy Garoppolo. Their head coach, Kyle Shanahan, is coaching like Jim Tomsula. And their best player, Christian McCaffrey, could be past his prime.

What gives Kyle Shanahan hope that the 49ers will be better next season than they were this season?

“I'll talk about 2025 when we get to 2025," Shanahan said. "But, you have hope every year. You put together the best team possible, you go and practice and you go out there and you battle. So that's what we do every single offseason. You figure out how to get the best players possible through free agency and the Draft, you try to keep your best players as possible, you go to work and you show up for Week One.”

It doesn't sound like Shanahan intends to do anything different. His plan is to get good players, work hard and show up. That's essentially what he said.

Which means we should expect Deebo Samuel and Kyle Juszczyk to remain on the team. We should expect more contract disputes and holdouts. And we should expect another disappointing season.

The 49ers need to tear it down and start over, but they won't. They're going to run it back for the ninth year in a row.

Good luck.

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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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