Using the 49ers’ recent history to determine 3 potential outcomes for this season
Under the “football is a game of inches” mantra is a picture of Kyle Shanahan leaning against a Gatorade cooler in the San Francisco 49ers locker room. You cannot tell Shanahan’s story without Emmanuel Sanders , MetLife Stadium, blockbuster trades for future Hall of Famers, or a Google search of “Can you still play with a torn UCL?” It’s that time of year when we make predictions about the upcoming 49ers’ season. The writers with zero rooting interest believe the Niners are destined for another playoff run. As always, expectations are high. However, there are varying degrees to which this team can be good and potentially great. We’ve seen them look like the most dominant team in the league for nearly a full season. We’ve also seen them bottom out and miss the playoffs completely. Then there are the iterations of the 49ers where they stumbled into the playoffs, despite being a cut below the league’s elite. No team in the 2020s experienced the volatility of an NFL season more than San Francisco . The ride has been turbulent. The past five seasons have established the 49ers’ best and worst versions. The peak looks like a team scoring 40 while their opponent struggles to get to 20. The basement is struggling to score a touchdown or having multiple three-game losing streaks in a season. We’ll use the 49ers’ past performance to predict what 2026 may look like. The impact Brock Purdy has had on the 49ers cannot be understated. Once he took over around December 2022, the offense, on the brink of a breakout, went nuclear to end the season. The defense, already excellent, morphed into the stingiest unit in the league. The season ended on a sour note, but the window between December 2022 and the NFC Championship Game that year was what it looked like when everything was clicking. Look at that season compared to other years this decade: Offense is at the top, and defense is at the bottom. The higher the better for the offense, while you want your EPA on defense to be lower. The 49ers didn’t lose a regular-season game after Halloween that year. From the time Purdy took over through the Divisional Playoff Round, the team had a +78 point differential. Two games were played within one possession. One was a Thursday night game against the Seahawks, and the other came against Jarrett Stidham — a game to this day remains among the most exciting of this timeline. What does everything breaking the 49ers’ way look like in 2026? The defensive personnel would need to take a Neil Armstrong-level leap for mankind. My theory for why the defense dramatically improved in the second half is that they had to defend fewer possessions without the pressure of feeling like they needed to get a stop on every drive. It helps when you have these four as your second-level defenders: Azeez Al-Shaair on one side and Talanoa Hufanga on the other, with Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw down the middle. This was before Arik Armstead returned to the lineup, another piece of the puzzle that helped the second-half surge. Hufanga’s sensational season was rewarded with All-Pro recognition, but once Armstead returned to the lineup, the 49ers’ rushing EPA was lower than any team in the league since 2019. Their rushing EPA of -0.272 topped the Seahawks last season (-0.206), the Vikings stout run defense in ’24 (-0.203), the Bucs in 2019 (-0.239) and 2020 (-0.209), as well as the Jets 2019 unit (-0.234). Those are the best rushing defenses since 2019. That team had a breakout candidate in Charles Omenihu , who managed 43 pressures and 29 quarterback hits. The team is banking on that being Osa Odighizuwa this year. Finding the Samson Ebukam of the group unlocks a different tier. Does Alfred Collins take a jump? Is it Romello Height in the form of a pass rush? Gracen Halton landing in the perfect role? Or is it a situation where the success is due to the sum being greater than its parts? Ideally, that’s Mykel Williams . Ebukam was known as a run defender, but as the th [... truncated ...]