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The Best-Case and Worst-Case Scenarios for the 49ers in 2025

The 49ers either will be really good or a complete disaster this season. There's no in between with them.
Grant Cohn|
Jun 10, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws a pass during drills in an OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images
Jun 10, 2025; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) throws a pass during drills in an OTA at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images | D. Ross Cameron-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers either will be really good or a complete disaster this season. There's no in between with them.

In Kyle Shanahan's eight seasons as 49ers head coach, they've made the NFC Championship game four times and missed the playoffs four times. They don't do mediocrity. They either dominate the league or they tank.

That's their best-case and worst-case scenarios for 2025 are drastically different according to CBS Sports' Cody Benjamin.

"Best-case scenario: Overlooked after their injury-riddled 2024 flop, the 49ers' top leaders -- Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle -- return to health, and Robert Saleh's 'D' powers San Francisco all the way back to the Super Bowl," writes Benjamin.

"Worst-case scenario: Purdy's big-money extension draws fair critique as the quarterback struggles to shake hiccups while trailing, and continued bumps and bruises to McCaffrey and Co. leave Kyle Shanahan straining for answers.

Benjamin did a good job laying out the two extreme potential outcomes for the 49ers. If things go well, their injury-prone players on offense will stay healthy, their inexperienced players on defense will develop rapidly under Saleh's direction and the team will make a deep run into the playoffs.

If things don't go well, injury-prone players will get injured again, rookies will play like rookies, Purdy will play like he did last season and the 49ers will miss the playoffs for the second year in a row. Which means Shanahan would have more losing seasons than winning ones.

High stakes for the 49ers. Either way, the season should be entertaining.

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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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