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Will the 49ers Make the Playoffs Next Season?

It's a stretch to expect the 49ers suddenly to play like it's 2023.
Grant Cohn|
Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) hands off to running back Christian McCaffrey (23) against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the first quarter at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images
Nov 10, 2024; Tampa, Florida, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) hands off to running back Christian McCaffrey (23) against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the first quarter at Raymond James Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images | Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

There are plenty of reasons to believe the 49ers will go to the playoffs this season. But there also are plenty of reasons to believe they won't.

If Christian McCaffrey and Trent Williams play and stay healthy, the 49ers should be good considering how weak their schedule looks on paper.

But McCaffrey and Williams aren't young anymore. McCaffrey will turn 29 in June and Williams will turn 37 in July. Just last season, McCaffrey missed 13 games and Williams missed 7. And if the 49ers somehow had reached the playoffs without them, they wouldn't have returned for the postseason. They were done for the year.

So it's a stretch to expect those two suddenly to play like it's 2023.

In addition, Brock Purdy could hold out all offseason if the 49ers don't finalize his contract extension soon. And they generally wait until September to finalize big extensions. So their starting quarterback could miss their entire offseason training program if they're not careful.

Also, their defense has been absolutely gutted this offseason. They lost Dre Greenlaw, Leonard Floyd, Javon Hargrave, Maliek Collins, Charvarius Ward, Talanoa Hufanga and Isaac Yiadon. Of course, they'll try to replenish that side of the ball with rookies from the draft, but those players could take a few years to develop and there's no guarantee that any of them will make a meaningful impact this year.

The return of Robert Saleh will help the defense because he's such a better coordinator than Nick Sorensen, but even Saleh needs talent to work with, and right now the 49ers aren't giving him much.

Don't be shocked if the 49ers miss the playoffs for the second season in a row.

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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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