Identifying what went wrong for 49ers in disastrous 2024 season

There is a fine line between reasons and excuses.

But there is no mistaking that the 49ers’ 2024 NFL season went horribly wrong for any number of reasons.

There was no fine line that prevented the 49ers from reaching their goal of getting to the top after the organization experienced heartbreak in Super Bowl LVIII.

The 49ers began the season with four losses in their first seven games. Then, they finished with seven losses in their final eight games. They had just one measly two-game winning streak en route to a last-place finish (6-11) in the NFC West.

“I think we are all pissed off in the right ways,” 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey said. “I think that’s a good place to be.”

Much of the same team will return in 2025, but there figure to be some dramatic changes, too.

The offseason begins with general manager John Lynch and coach Kyle Shanahan determining where things went wrong in 2024. Spoiler alert: The list is long.

Then, Lynch and Shanahan must work toward trouble-shooting those many issues and charting the course for next season.

The 49ers experienced breakdowns in areas too many to list. And there is plenty of crossover among the groups and subgroups.

For instance, the 49ers were hit with an abundance of injuries to their stars, including their main offensive playmakers. In 2023, Christian McCaffrey, Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel combined to score 40 touchdowns. This season, they combined for just four touchdowns — all coming from Deebo Samuel.

Samuel played 14 games (not including one game in which he played just four snaps due to pneumonia). Aiyuk and McCaffrey combined to play in 11 games. Those three never were on the field at the same time this season.

So the 49ers did not receive production from many of their star players. But many of their star players did not produce due to injuries.

So let’s start there. . . 

Decimated by injuries

It all began in the first half of the Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, when linebacker Dre Greenlaw tore his left Achilles tendon in his excitement to leave the sideline to enter the field of play after a change in possession.

Not only did that injury have a big impact on that game, it virtually ended Greenlaw’s 2024 season, too.

Greenlaw played only one half of football after making his return to the field in late-December. Risking further injury, he was shut down after playing just four snaps in Week 16 at Miami.

McCaffrey, the 2023 NFL Offensive Player of the Year, missed all of training camp and the first eight games of the season with bilateral Achilles tendinitis. Then, he sustained a non-surgical knee injury just four games into his return that brought a premature end to his season.

Aiyuk sustained a torn ACL in Week 7, defensive tackle Javon Hargrave (torn pectoral) was out of the season after just three games. All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams made it through 10 games due to an ankle injury. Safety Talanoa Hufanga appeared in just seven games.

All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner played all 17 games, but he played the final 12 games with a fractured ankle and was not as effective as he was before the injury.

The 49ers turned to backups — and backups for the backups — and the drop-offs in production were quite noticeable and glaring.

Coaches don’t get job done

The 49ers were horrible in the second halves of games this season. Ultimately, that falls on coach Kyle Shanahan and his staff.

San Francisco was outscored 165 to 88 in the fourth quarter of their games this season.

Why? That’s difficult to pinpoint, exactly. But, clearly, the opposition routinely did a better job of solving the 49ers’ schemes in order to finish strong.

Shanahan’s team blew double-digit second-half leads to NFC West opponents Los Angeles and Arizona in Weeks 3 and 5. And that was a hole the 49ers never were able to fully dig themselves out from under.

The offense was off by two points from first half to second half. The defense surrendered a touchdown more per game in the second half.

Defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen had a rocky start and an even worse end to the season. At different points, Warner and defensive end Nick Bosa remarked that the 49ers were slow to make adjustments.

It looked as if Sorensen had his unit playing better for a couple weeks late in the season. But the wheels came off as the 49ers fell out of contention.

Bosa labeled the season as an “embarrassment” after the 49ers gave up 47 points to the Cardinals in the season finale.

Special-teams blunders

You name it, the 49ers found a way to screw it up on special teams.

And it goes far beyond the problems of second-year kicker Jake Moody, who finished the season on a disastrous 11-of-20 field-goal skid.

The 49ers surrendered a blocked punt against Minnesota in Week 2 and a fake punt against the Rams in Week 3. They gave up another fake punt against the Cardinals in Week 18.

The coverage units gave up a kickoff-return touchdown against Seattle, and long returns that led to injuries to kickers-turned-tacklers Moody and Matthew Wright.

It is difficult to quantify, exactly, how poorly the 49ers played on special teams. But when it was time for Shanahan to shift focus to next season, the first move made was to fire special teams coordinator Brian Schneider.

Offseason vibes . . . off

Things just never felt right after the 49ers reported to training camp during the summer.

Trent Williams and Brandon Aiyuk were at odds with the organization over to their contract issues. Williams was a hold out. Aiyuk was a “hold in,” and that caused plenty of distractions.

Aiyuk attended meetings and practices but never stepped on the field with his teammates.

Perhaps, as a result, the 49ers’ training camp was severely lacking. Without Greenlaw, McCaffrey, Williams and Aiyuk on the field, things were not crisp, focused or particularly intense.

Things got so bad with Aiyuk that the 49ers had agreements in place for trades that would have sent him to at least two other teams — but not teams for which Aiyuk wished to play.

The 49ers eventually ended up providing Williams with a new contract and gave Aiyuk a top-dollar deal on a four-year extension.

Then, as the 49ers were preparing for their end-of-camp party to celebrate their initial 53-man roster, rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot through the chest during a robbery attempt in San Francisco.

Pearsall was in and out of the hospital in less than 24 hours, but the team’s first-round draft pick would spend the first six games of the season on the non-football injury list.

In-season vibes . . . off

It was not a good look when Moody missed his third field-goal attempt against the Tampa Buccaneers in Week 10 when Samuel and Pepper mixed it up along the sideline.

Samuel told Moody to “(expletive deleted) lock in.” Pepper took exception with Samuel’s tone and those two had a brief confrontation that was captured on TV.

Several weeks later, it was Samuel who needed to lock in. After saying he was not getting enough opportunities to produce, he had plenty of chances in a must-win game against the Rams in Week 15. Samuel dropped a big third-down pass that could’ve gone for a touchdown. The 49ers ended up losing 12-6.

“I feel like (if) I make that play, we win the game,” Samuel said.

In that same game — a game in which the 49ers needed a victory to remain alive in the hunt for the NFC West — veteran linebacker De’Vondre Campbell declined to leave the sideline when summoned into the game.

The 49ers signed Campbell to a one-year contract to fill in for Greenlaw. Campbell started 12 games up to that point. He found himself out of the lineup with Greenlaw’s return.

And when Greenlaw was taken out of the game, Campbell told coaches he was not going to play.

"He said he didn’t want to play today," Shanahan told reporters after the game.

Lynch caught wind of Campbell’s decision to remain in uniform on the sideline. He went to the 49ers’ sideline and ordered Campbell to go to the locker room. Campbell was never again seen at Levi’s Stadium.

George Kittle, Nick Bosa, Deommodore Lenoir and Ward were among the 49ers players who blasted Campbell, a nine-year NFL veteran, for his selfishness and lack of professionalism.

Tragedies off field

The 49ers had an unspeakably difficult season away from the field, too.

Cornerback Charvarius Ward took a four-game bereavement leave due to the death of his young daughter, Amani Joy, on Oct. 28. A second-team All-Pro selection in 2023, Ward suffered through real-life issues away from football.

"It took everything physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually," Ward said on Monday. "It took all of that every day for me to just come here and be able to practice. I wasn't going to meetings half the time.

“My social battery was so low. It was just hard being around people. I didn't want people to feel sorry for me and everything like that. I just tried to show up and be there for my teammates."

And while Williams was sidelined with an ankle injury, his wife, Sondra, revealed she gave birth to a stillborn son on Nov. 24 after first losing the other twin earlier during pregnancy.

Trading FGs for TDs

This category surely is an amalgamation of a lot of different factors, including coaching, injuries, personnel, chemistry, etc.

In 2023, the 49ers were very good at scoring touchdowns to finish drives. They also were good at forcing the opposition to settle for three points.

Just the opposite was true in 2024.

McCaffrey was a touchdown-scoring machine last season with 18 touchdowns inside the red zone. Of course, he was held without a touchdown during his injury-plagued 2024 season.

The 49ers went from being the top red-zone offense in the league in 2023 (touchdowns on 68 percent of the team’s trips inside the opposition’s 20-yard line) to middle of the pack at 57.1 percent.

The 49ers hovered near the bottom of the NFL for much of the season before showing some improvements later in the year.

Defensively, the 49ers were just awful on third downs and inside the red zone.

The 49ers’ third-down defense was 24th in the NFL, and their red-zone defense was 31st. The 49ers were as bad in the red zone defensively as they were great offensively in 2023. The 49ers allowed touchdowns 68.4 percent of the time inside their own 20-yard line.

Lacking the right personnel

It is easy to look back on the 2021 pre-draft trade as being a reason the 49ers’ 53-man roster simply was not good enough.

The 49ers moved up to No. 3 overall to select quarterback Trey Lance, trading away their original selection at No. 12 that year, as well as first- and third-round picks in 2022 and a first-round pick in 2023.

San Francisco cut ties with Lance after two injury-plagued seasons. Brock Purdy, the final pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, rescued the team with his play at quarterback.

But the 49ers missed the opportunity to add quality players at other spots because of the original trade to acquire Lance.

The 49ers could have used those picks dealt to Miami before the 2021 NFL Draft to strengthen the offensive and defensive lines, for sure.

As far as the 2023 offseason, the 49ers had strong contributions from their rookie class this season. And free-agent pickups Maliek Collins and Leonard Floyd were fine — though they probably were counted upon too much.

But the organization whiffed completely on Campbell, and got very little from any of their other free-agent acquisitions.

Kittle, the only shining star

The 49ers had four players honored with selections to the NFC Pro Bowl team.

But tight end George Kittle was the only star player on their roster that fully played up to his expectations this season.

Kittle caught 78 passes for 1,106 yards and eight touchdowns to continue establishing himself among the absolute best tight ends in football.

Warner, plagued by his ankle injury, did not generate a forced fumble or interception in the final 11 games of the season. Bosa sat out three games due to injuries. His nine sacks were his lowest for a full season since his rookie year.

Quarterback Brock Purdy’s numbers took a major dive this season after he was in discussion for NFL MVP through most of 2023.

Still, Purdy finished seventh in the NFL in QBR — behind only Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Jayden Daniels, Jordan Love and Jared Goff.

Purdy will be back next season, and the 49ers are certain to reward him in the offseason with a lucrative contract.

“I know that I’m the guy for this organization and I can do what it takes to help lead us to where we want to go,” Purdy said on Monday. “And I’m confident in that.”

The 49ers seem to share Purdy’s self-confidence.

Samuel said he has no questions about his future with the team, but his drop-off in production this season was alarming. His average yardage per reception fell from 14.9 to 13.1, and his average per rush attempt went from 6.1 to 3.2.

The 49ers’ nucleus of stars will be another year older

There certainly will be a degree of turning over the roster and the coaching staff. The team also is counting on many top-line players returning from injuries to give the team a boost next season.

A lot went wrong for the 49ers in 2024.

A lot will have to right for them to work their way back toward the top of the NFL in 2025.

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