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Will the 49ers Miss the Playoffs Again Next Season?

The pressure is on.
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-Imagn Images
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-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers just purged their roster, but they're not rebuilding. They have to make the playoffs next season or lots of people could lose their jobs. That's the way the NFL works.

The 49ers will have more than $86 million in dead cap space in 2025, so they're not expected to go to the Super Bowl. But they need to at least go to the playoffs and preferably win a game.

That's because the Rams had more than $75 million in dead cap space in 2023, and Sean McVay led them to a 10-7 season. Then in the playoffs, they lost by one point to the Lions in the first round.

In addition, the Bills had more than $75 million in dead cap space last season, and Sean McDermott led them to a 13-4 season and an AFC Championship appearance.

Both of those teams have terrific coaches and outstanding quarterbacks.

The 49ers think they have the same formula. Kyle Shanahan is supposed to be an elite head coach, and Brock Purdy is supposed to be a franchise quarterback. That's why the 49ers could give him a contract extension that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the league this offseason.

If Purdy gets more than $40 million per season, he will be expected to carry and elevate a young, limited roster the way Matthew Stafford and Josh Allen in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

But we've seen Purdy try to elevate a flawed team. He can't do it. We learned that last season. He needs a great team around him to be great.

So yes, the 49ers absolutely could miss the playoffs again next season even though they have an easy schedule on paper.

The pressure is on.

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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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