This Might Be the Best Team Kyle Shanahan Has Ever Had
Purdy, a healthy McCaffrey, Mike Evans and Christian Kirk in the receiver room, and Bosa and Warner walking back through the door. On paper this is the deepest roster of the Shanahan era. There is only one question, and it is the same one it always is.
I have been watching Kyle Shanahan run this team for a long time now, and I have seen a lot of good rosters walk into training camp with real hope attached to them. I am telling you the one about to report this summer might be the best of all of them. Not the flashiest, not the youngest, but the deepest and most complete top to bottom. And I say that fully aware of how this story tends to go around here, which is why I am going to spend most of this column being honest with you instead of just selling you a dream.
Start with the quarterback, because everything starts there. Brock Purdy is entrenched, he is healthy, and behind him the 49ers actually have insurance for once in Mac Jones, a real NFL starter who knows this system cold. For years Shanahan built his offense around surviving a quarterback injury. This year he gets to build it around ambition instead. That is a different exercise, and it is the kind of luxury contenders have and pretenders do not.
Then look at the weapons. San Francisco went out and added Mike Evans, a Hall of Fame receiver Shanahan himself called a unique dude, and paired him with Christian Kirk on a bargain one-year deal, and they still have Ricky Pearsall coming into his own and rookie De'Zhaun Stribling in the building. For the first time in recent memory this team has a legitimate three-deep receiver room, which means George Kittle, once he is fully back from his own injury recovery, is not being asked to be the whole passing game by himself. And the running back is the one that matters most: Christian McCaffrey enters this season fully healthy, and a healthy McCaffrey changes the physics of everything Shanahan wants to do. Behind Trent Williams and that offensive line, with those pieces, the offense should be a nightmare to defend.
Now the part that actually decides the season, which is the defense, and specifically who is standing on it. Last year that unit fell apart, and it was not complicated why. They lost Nick Bosa and Fred Warner, their two best and most irreplaceable players, to major injuries early, and the defense cratered without them, finishing dead last in the league in sacks. That they still squeezed out their fifth 10-win season since 2019 mostly without those two tells you everything about the floor of this operation. Now Bosa is back from ACL surgery and says he is on track for the opener. Warner is back from the dislocated ankle that was supposed to end his year. You put those two All-Pros back into that defense and it is a completely different group. It is not a stretch to say the difference between last year's team and this year's team is simply having its best players available.
Which brings me to the only thing I actually want to talk about, because it is the only thing that has ever mattered with this franchise. Health. Every version of this Shanahan roster has had the talent to win a Super Bowl. Not one of them has been able to get to February with its best players on the field at the same time. Somebody is always down. McCaffrey, Bosa, Warner, Aiyuk, Williams, name the year and I will name you the guy in the walking boot when it counted. This roster is loaded, but it is also old in the places that matter. McCaffrey, Trent Williams, Mike Evans, Kittle, Kyle Juszczyk, all of them will be 30 or older by Week 1. Talent that experienced is exactly the talent that pulls a hamstring in December. That is not pessimism. That is the entire history of this team under this coach.
So the pitch is simple, and it is the same pitch it has been every year, except this time the roster underneath it is better than it has ever been. If the 49ers stay healthy. If Purdy takes every snap. If McCaffrey plays 16 games instead of six. If Bosa and Warner make it through January in one piece. If the football gods, who have been so cruel to this franchise for so long, finally look the other way for four straight months, then this is a team that can win the whole thing. Not sneak into the playoffs. Win it. The talent is that real.
I have learned to be careful with this team, because I have had my heart broken by better rosters than the ones people remember. But I am also not going to lie to you and pretend the ceiling is anything other than what it is. This is Shanahan's most complete roster, in a division he can win, with a quarterback playing the best football of his life and a defense that gets its spine back the moment Bosa and Warner jog out of that tunnel. Everything is in place. It has been in place before. The only thing that has ever stopped this team is the training room, and if they can finally stay out of it, the 49ers might not just be good this year. They might finally be the ones holding the trophy.
More coverage: 49ers section · Columns · Bay Area Sports Blog home