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Are the 49ers Punting the 2025 Season Before it Starts?

It's hard to say the 49ers honestly expect to go far this year.
Grant Cohn|
Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan walks onto the field before the game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images
Dec 30, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan walks onto the field before the game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images | Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

It's hard to say the 49ers honestly expect to go far this year.

They're coming off a 6-11 season. They just let nine starters walk in free agency. They signed no one to replace those players. They have 11 draft picks and they need to hit on seven or eight of them.

Which means the 49ers have a chance to be really good next season. But that chance seems quite low as of now. And they probably know it.

Because even if they were to hit on seven or eight draft picks, those players might not be good until 2026 or 2027. Because young players often take a year or two to develop.

To be fair, the 49ers have one of the easiest schedules on paper in the league this year. So they could find a way to win 10 games even with a mediocre roster. But they also lost five games in their own division last season, so there's no guarantee they'll dominate the teams they'll face in 2025.

In addition, the 49ers are engaged in a lengthy contract negotiation with Brock Purdy that will make him the highest-paid player in franchise history. If recent history is any indicator, this deal won't get done until early September and Purdy will hold out until he gets paid -- that's what Nick Bosa, Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams did the past two years.

If the 49ers are prepared for Purdy to hold out and miss OTAs, minicamp and training camp, then they're not serious about contending this season.

Letting Purdy hold out would be punting the season before it begins.

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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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