49ers Owner Jed York: "It's not a complete failure to not win."

ORLANDO -- 10 years ago when the 49ers fired Jim Harbaugh, owner Jed York famously said that he doesn't raise NFC Championship banners, he raises only Super Bowl banners, and if fails to deliver a Super Bowl trophy to hold him directly responsible and accountable.

Then this past season before the 49ers lost the Super Bowl. York said the season would have been a success even if they had lost to the Lions in the NFC Championship Game.

So this week at the NFL Annual Meeting, I asked York how his thinking has shifted over the past decade when it comes to winning Super Bowls. Here's what he said.

YORK: "You can't be ashamed of a successful season. Our goal is always going to be to win Super Bowls. Even if we won the game, it's not like we could take off 2024 because we won a Super Bowl in 2023. Our goal is always going to be the same. What I've learned in my time as CEO, it's not a complete failure to not win. (When I was younger), I probably had more of a "you either win the Super Bowl or you 100 percent lose" (mentality). You can't not celebrate the fact that we've accomplished some really good things with this team. I would trade a lot of good seasons for winning a Super Bowl, but we've collectively had a very very successful program, and I want to make sure that we continue to do that, and the only way to win the Super Bowl is you have to get there first. And we've obviously been very close several times. You have to keep building off it. It almost seems worse to lose a Super Bowl than to not make the playoffs, and I don't think that's how teams should feel. As much as I would give just about anything to have won this game or four years ago Kansas City, you can't leave and say the whole season was a disgrace. It's not. It's a disappointment to not win, but you can't destroy yourself and everything you've built because you didn't finish and hit your ultimate goal. That doesn't mean we're not going to work toward it and do everything that we can to build this thing so we get back there and go win it in New Orleans this year, but that's my feeling about it."

MY TAKE: If you're ok finishing second, you're never going to finish first. York should have kept these feelings to himself and told 49ers fans that he's doing everything in his power to get over the hump and win his first Super Bowl. Nothing more.