One Major Roster Flaw on the San Francisco 49ers

This is a real issue.

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The San Francisco 49ers are one of the most likely teams to win a Super Bowl this season. They built their roster to take a swing at it this year and are not too concerned with what happens down the road. That can easily be seen by their ranking of young core players. 

The San Francisco 49ers have a bad group of young players

The 49ers ranked 28th overall in a power ranking of core players under the age of 27 in a recent Bleacher Report article written by Kristopher Knox. The core players that were noted were Brock Purdy, Dominick Puni, and Ji’Ayir Brown. 

The author probably should have included Malik Mustapha and not Brown, and he missed Deommodore Lenoir, who still qualifies for this list. Still, Mykel Williams and Alfred Collins are the only other names that could have arguably been missed, and both of them have had questions in their first season with the team. 

There are a lot of potential core players, and players who could become a part of the core soon, but none of them have quite landed on giving them an outlet of talent after the star names have left. 

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The 49ers are not concerned by this, though. They doubled down on their age in free agency by signing Mike Evans and Christian Kirk. Even Dre Greenlaw is likely a signing with a short shelf life, and it cost them trading Dee Winters, who was on a rookie salary. So, they know what they are doing, and it is not getting the roster ready to transition. They are hoping that a Super Bowl win with the star players on the roster is worth any sort of reset the team has to do. 

More than that, the team has not drafted well enough to get out of this position. As noted, Williams and Collins are not established core players yet. Renardo Green took a step back last year, and Ricky Pearsall could not get healthy. Their top picks in recent years still have serious questions. Until they get more bang from those high picks, this will be a question, even after a mini rebuild or reset. 

The other notable piece is that the teams worse than the 49ers are the Dolphins, Steelers, Commanders, and Titans. These are not playoff contenders. So, teams like the Rams and Seahawks are finding ways to compete at a similar or even better level than San Francisco with more optimism towards the future.