49ers have no excuse to lose Super Bowl, Stephen A. Smith declares

Stephen A. Smith did not hold back when describing the need for the 49ers to win the Super Bowl this season.

Speaking on ESPN’s “First Take” on Friday morning, the outspoken analyst explained why San Francisco must win a championship now.

“Just looking at them and all the personnel that they have in place,” Smith said. "There is absolutely no excuse – they better sign Trent Williams now, they better get his situation resolved – but outside of that, there’s no excuse for the 49ers not to finally kick down this door.

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“And I think that ultimately when you get four chances at the apple, four NFC title game appearances in the last five years, two Super Bowl appearances in the last five years, and you don’t come across with a ring one time? At some point, you’ve knocked on the door enough and somebody like Detroit [Lions] or Green Bay [Packers] or Philadelphia [Eagles] is going to move you out of the way.”

While the 49ers have come tantalizingly close to winning that elusive Super Bowl, the franchise is running out of opportunities to win with its current roster of stars.

With Brock Purdy on his cheap rookie contract for one more year, it will be impossible for San Francisco to keep this group together beyond the 2024-25 NFL season as it will have to pay its star quarterback.

San Francisco enters the season as one of the favorites to advance to Super Bowl LIX but plenty of challenges lie ahead. The Lions and the Packers have young and talented rosters that gave the 49ers all they could handle in last season’s NFL playoffs, not to mention the always-dangerous Eagles squad who made the Super Bowl two years ago.