The San Francisco 49ers are looking to bounce back from a rough 2016 season, but things aren’t looking good for an immediate turnaround.
You could probably make a movie about the 2016 San Francisco 49ers. Use the title of that Steve Carell movie and call it “The 49ers and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” That’s how bad last season was for the 49ers.
Corny movie titles and jokes aside, fans in San Francisco can’t be happy with the result of the campaign, as the 49ers went an abysmal 2-14 to fall to the bottom of the NFC West for the second straight season.
They haven’t been able to have any success since the 2013 season, and have been on a slow decline all the way from a 12-4 season that year to their poor performance in 2016. Now, San Francisco still lacks contending talent but has improved its situation both on the sideline and in the front office.
Despite its bad year an limited roster, the team has hope. With how tough it is to lock down coaches in the league, they landed themselves a potential star in Kyle Shanahan from the defending NFC champions, the Atlanta Falcons.
In addition to adding Shanahan’s talents to their coaching staff, they hired John Lynch as their new general manager, giving the former NFL star his first gig of that magnitude. Although he’s inexperienced, he has time to grow in his new position and gives the 49ers someone that will stick around for the duration.
Although there are positives with those two new acquisitions, the team doesn’t have a lot to look forward to on the field. The 49ers waved goodbye to Colin Kaepernick and Blaine Gabbert, and now have Brian Hoyer to look forward to under center. Hoyer isn’t great, but he should be a moderate upgrade at the quarterback spot.
Add in a no-name list of wide receivers for Hoyer to work with, and it doesn’t look too promising for the 49ers to do a lot of damage offensively this season.
This as a rebuilding year, as San Francisco will look to make it through this season in a relatively even division above them. The 49ers won’t be making a ton of noise, but there are real building blocks. The front seven has major talent including Arik Armstead, Reuben Foster, DeForest Buckner, NaVorro Bowman and Solomon Thomas. If the franchise quarterback can be found in the 2018 NFL Draft, good things are ahead.
In the end, it doesn’t look great for the 49ers heading into 2017, but we will get to see our first glimpse at the work Shanahan can do as head coach. If he can get the offense turning in the right direction by season’s end, that has to be declared a win for San Francisco.
X-Factor
It’s tough to pick an X-factor from this entire situation, but if you needed to give one name that title, it’d likely be Carlos Hyde.
Hyde hasn’t been a superstar for the 49ers, but he’s easily the best skill-position player of this group. If San Francisco is going to generate any kind of attack, it will center around Hyde and his considerable talents.
Hyde could help turn things around if he’s utilized in a new way and given the chance to really lead the way for the offense. Shanahan had a ton of success with running backs in his tenure with the Falcons, and if he can replicate the success he had with Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman in Atlanta with a guy like Hyde, it could be huge for the 49ers.
Best case
The NFC West always has some huge question marks surrounding every team, and things can get hairy for anyone at a moment’s notice during the regular season. If that’s the case, the 49ers may have the chance to steal a couple of games and improve upon last year’s dismal record.
Unfortunately for 49ers fans, a best-case scenario here is likely just winning four or five games in this season, and maybe taking a couple of key divisional games to help play spoiler for some of their rivals.
Worst case
The Seahawks are healthy again, the Cardinals have had a year to figure things out with a good roster and the Rams are maturing with some great, young talents. That all combined with the 49ers fledgling team could be a recipe for another tough campaign, even with Shanahan and his bright mind at the helm.
Worst case here, the 49ers win just one game this season, but that’s unlikely considering the talent on the defensive side of the ball. San Francisco isn’t going to beat many good teams, if any, but there is a chance that this group improves throughout the campaign and becomes a tough one in the later months.
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Final word
Right now, this is a team in transition. The front office is now there, the coaching staff is in place and the defense has some pillars to build off. If nothing else, that is already a huge improvement over what has been going on in the East Bay over the past two years.
Still, there is no quarterback to build off at the moment and the receiving core isn’t anything to buzz about. This is a time to look of the maturation of good, young players such as Thomas and Foster while figuring out the best way to spend cap space and draft capital moving forward.