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Vernon Davis Explains What the 49ers Must Do to Win the Super Bowl

The 49ers know how to get to the Super Bowl -- they just haven't figured out how to win one since 1995.

Grant Cohn

Feb 3, 2013; New Orleans, LA, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis (85) speaks to the media after losing Super Bowl XLVII against Baltimore Ravens at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
Feb 3, 2013; New Orleans, LA, USA; San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis (85) speaks to the media after losing Super Bowl XLVII against Baltimore Ravens at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
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The 49ers know how to get to the Super Bowl -- they just haven't figured out how to win one since 1995.

Vernon Davis was on the first 49ers team to lose a Super Bowl back in 2013. Which means he's had more than a decade to stew on that loss and think about what the 49ers could or should have done differently.

Today, I asked him what the current 49ers need to do differently to get over the hump. His answer was fascinating.

"Continue to do what they've been doing," Davis. "Adding pieces. Taking pieces away. It's the name of the game. They're very close. I think if they can have that same attitude, that same approach that they had last year to get back to where they were, they'll have a shot. They made it that far for a reason. They were arguably one of the best teams in the NFL. But they lacked the details in that game. It always goes back to the little things. They didn't do the little things to win that game. Maybe the Chiefs were that much better. But it's all in the details."

I completely agree with Davis. The 49ers botched the small details in this past Super Bowl. Which means they weren't fully prepared for the biggest game of their lives.

The 49ers offense couldn't pick up a blitz to save their lives. Their defense couldn't touch Patrick Mahomes. And their head coach, Kyle Shanahan, didn't know the overtime rules for the playoffs.

Talk out overlooking an important detail.

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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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