[The messaging from the coach](https://sfstandard.com/2025/04/01/49ers-owner-jed-york-brock-purdy-contract/) and general manager this week has been consistent and has made sense: They hated to lose so many notable veterans, but they knew they were due for something like this after the splurges over recent years.
I doubt that Shanahan and Lynch were quite expecting _all_ of the departures — the urgent, unsuccessful trip to try to get Dre Greenlaw to back out of his verbal agreement with Denver and the odd timing to some other discardings would be a vivid piece of evidence — but they also didn’t go into this blindly. They weren’t battling York and Paraag Marathe over each failed negotiation. There was no quiet mutiny. There’s a lot of work to do with this roster, but they are on board.
“Yeah, I’m part of it all,” Shanahan said. “It’s not \[that\] you’re just sitting there coaching and all you’re doing is blowing a whistle. I mean, you understand how the salary cap works, to a degree. … You understand how it balances out. That’s why you do have to make some tough decisions. You do that every year. That’s why you can’t always swing for the fence. If you do, that’s going to balance out over the years.” Tellingly, Shanahan compared bringing Robert Saleh back for his second defensive-coordinator stint this year to the start of this era in 2017, when Shanahan and Lynch inherited a relatively barren roster and hired Saleh to figure out something on defense. Shanahan hasn’t talked like this about any 49ers situation in a long time. They were so comfortable with their offensive and defensive lineups two years ago that they went a little nuts and used a third-round pick on kicker Jake Moody. Oops! But if you look at the 49ers’ current defensive-line and linebacking depth chart, two of the most important position groups on the team, you can understand what’s going on here. The coaching staff will be slapping together playing rotations on the fly in this training camp at multiple positions. In many ways, it’s 2017 or ’18 all over again.So the 49ers aren’t really aiming for the Super Bowl this season. Even with all their remaining stars, that’s unrealistic. They might draft perfectly, pull out of a bunch of close finishes, and remain healthy enough to steal 10 or 11 wins. But they absolutely don’t match up with the Eagles, Lions, or Commanders right now. It’s just reality. And Shanahan, to his credit, doesn’t deal in unreality.“I don’t think it’s about lowering expectations,” Shanahan said. “It’s kind of the position your team’s in. We lost the Super Bowl in overtime before last year. That’s all anyone can think about. … That’s kinda how it was for us last year. We took our shot. This year we had a bad year. We didn’t do good. We didn’t make the playoffs. So all we’re talking about is how to get back to playing good football. And we know we lost a lot of good players. But … what I’m thinking about is how good we can get in the draft. How many people we can add?”
If you think that sounds like a new two- or three-year plan, similar to Lynch and Shanahan’s methodical build-up to their first Super Bowl trip after the 2019 season, well, I agree. They still have Nick Bosa, Trent Williams, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, Fred Warner, Purdy, Aiyuk, and many others. But they had all of those guys last season, suffered waves of injuries and under-performance, and finished 6-11. And who says the 49ers won’t get hit with more injuries and poor performances in 2025? They’ll be even thinner on the depth chart, so even a light tide of injuries could have more devastating effects.