It’s not often that you can ask a group of players on a 53-man roster to describe the state of their season and get the same answer from all of them.
But for the 49ers in 2024, the situation seems clear: Things are strange.
After a 12-5 season and a trip to the Super Bowl last February, San Francisco retooled its defense, dealt with high-profile holdouts from tackle Trent Williams and receiver
Brandon Aiyuk, and entered the 2024 season seemingly ready to dominate the NFC once again.
However, aside from two home victories over the struggling Jets and Patriots, the 49ers have suffered defeats to the Vikings, Rams, and Cardinals, dropping them to 2-3.
Even more troubling, they held 10-point fourth-quarter leads in two of those losses.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Michael Silver sought input from several 49ers about their season.
Star cornerback Charvarius Ward summed it up: “This year, for sure, it feels weird. It feels real, real weird.
“I mean, hopefully, it’ll turn around, but it’s just really peculiar. We’ve got a lot of talent, and we’re losing games we’re supposed to win.”
‘It Does Feel Weird’ Ward wasn’t the only one with this perspective. Fellow cornerback Deommodore Lenoir echoed similar thoughts after the Cardinals loss.
“Yeah, losing to Arizona — it does feel weird,” Lenoir said. “In my four years here, we don’t do that (often).
So, I can agree with that.”
Indeed, the 49ers had won their previous four matchups against Arizona before Sunday.
Silver also spoke to fullback Kyle Juszczyk, who acknowledged that while the 49ers shouldn’t be in panic mode, something seems off in their ability to close out games and beat teams they should be handling.
It’s… well, weird.
“I mean, it’s weird. It’s not like everything’s fine, but it’s also not like the world’s crumbling,” Juszczyk observed.
49ers Injuries, 4th-Quarter Struggles Can Be Fixed The 49ers can find solace in two factors that could make the season feel less strange as it progresses.
First, they’ve been dealing with a wave of injuries. Most notably, Christian McCaffrey has been on injured reserve and has yet to play this season.
While Jordan Mason has filled in well, McCaffrey’s versatility and playmaking are central to the 49ers’ offense.
Injuries have also plagued both the offensive and defensive lines, and now kicker Jake Moody is sidelined for a few weeks due to a high ankle sprain.
An injured kicker? That definitely qualifies as strange.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan, however, doesn’t see things as weird. As a coach, he’s focused on execution, pointing to specific issues that led to a couple of tough losses.
“It comes down to specifics,” Shanahan explained to reporters on Monday. “So, it’s hard to give a generic answer.
But in these two games, these division games that we believe we should have won with the lead we had in the second half, I thought this one was worse than the Rams one in terms of we got sloppier in terms of our turnovers and things like that, not scoring in the second half.
“When you have a lead on people, you need to finish them. The way you finish is you keep scoring, and if you aren’t doing that, you can’t turn it over and you’ve got to stop people at the end.”
