NFL power rankings say Seahawks rival had worst offseason of any team

When the Legion of Boom era Seattle Seahawks were still coming up, success was defined by how well they did against Jim Harbaugh and the San Francisco 49ers, who had arguably the toughest team in the NFC the first few years of the Pete Carroll era. Eventually the Seahawks broke through and dominated the declining Niners - until the end of the Russell Wilson era, anyway.

Eventually that early dynamic came back around as Kyle Shanahan's 49ers teams became the class of the NFC, earning two trips to the Super Bowl in five years and utterly dominating the Seahawks in every meeting. Now it seems the pendulum is swinging back the other way, though.

Thanks to a disastrous, injury-plagued year and a brutal offseason, the Los Angeles Rams are now the clear team to beat in the NFC West, and the Niners are in serious decline again.

If you need evidence of just how far San Francisco has fallen, observe these power rankings from Yahoo Sports, which graded all 32 teams based on their complete offseason. The Niners came in at a D-, which was the worst mark in the league.

"The 49ers aren't better. There were no key free agent additions. Some extremely productive veterans like Deebo Samuel are gone... George Kittle is back in the fold at record money. That kept the grade from being an F."

Perhaps they should get an F, but keep in mind the 49ers still have most of their blue-chip core intact, including Kittle, but also left tackle Trent Williams, middle linebacker Fred Warner and edge rusher Nick Bosa. Most of all they still have Shanahan, who's still the best playcaller in the game today and can make up for all kinds of roster deficiencies, at least on offense.

The biggest one of those is of course at quarterback, where the Niners somehow manage to win consistnetly despite Colin Kaepernick still being their best and most-talented passer in the modern era. The reason why so many key role players have left this offseason is that the Niners are preparing to pay Brock Purdy an exorbitant sum on his next contract.

Purdy's numbers may look good, but they're also deceptive, and odds are Shanahan could pick a fan out of the stands to play quarterback and they'd come out looking much better than they'd have any business of doing no thanks to their own ability. There's still time to pull back from the precipice, but paying Purdy top-10 QB kind of monwill slam that Super Bowl window closed.

As for Seattle, the Seahawks came in at 17th on Yahoo's list with a B-, which pretty much aligns where everyone has them - still stuck in the middle of the pack.

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