Kurtenbach: The music has stopped playing for the ‘last dance’ 49ers
The 49ers are 5-7. They have the same record as the NFL’s laughingstock, the Dallas Cowboys.
They’re in last place in the NFC West, two games back of first-place Seattle, and they’re injured beyond recognition.
This is a bad football team.
I know because they do what all bad teams do: play poorly in the biggest moments.
In fact, this team is so bad that it doesn’t even have big moments anymore. The Niners’ last two games have been nationally televised blowouts in which the outcome was in question for mere seconds of the 60 minutes of game time.
So forgive me if I roll my eyes at the steady stream of optimism the Niners’ team leaders pushed following Sunday’s 35-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills in Western New York, the team’s third-straight loss and second-straight defeat by 25-plus points.
Please spare me the talk of playing up to this team’s “standard.”
Or the notion that these 49ers “can still win out” because they have “the right guys in the locker room.”
Yes, the Niners want us to believe they are only a tweak or two away from the Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco defense can’t count to 12 or stop a play they know is coming. The offense seems hellbent on finding new ways to squander drives. Their special teams are the envy of no one in the NFL.
Next man up? We haven’t even finished counting the injured.
Still having something to play for? The Niners didn’t show up to play in the last two games — contests against top opponents that would define their season.
Do the Niners think we’re not watching these games?
We, sadly, are. And last time I checked, we operated in the same realm of reality. (Though this gaslighting is so strong that I am starting to question it.)
While nothing will match the embarrassment of the Niners’ performance on the field these past two weeks or these past few months, it’s a comically bad look for the 49ers to go full Black Knight and publicly pretend “it’s just a flesh wound.”
Either the 49ers are lying to themselves, or they’re lying to us.
I’d hope, for their sake, it’s the latter, but I can’t be sure of that, either.
Amid a blizzard in Western New York on Sunday, the Niners — down their two highest-paid players on both sides of the ball — fumbled three times and slipped so often it was impossible to keep count.
Star linebacker Fred Warner’s forearms — yes, his forearms, and yes, both of them — cramped up in sub-freezing temperatures.
Bills quarterback Josh Allen threw a touchdown pass to himself.
And while Christian McCaffrey finally looked like himself — the best running back in the NFL — only to sustain another injury, this time to his knee. Niners head coach Kyle Shanahan called it “potentially season-ending.”
It’s as if the 49ers became bored with simply losing big and decided that they’d not just lose by three-plus touchdowns again, but they’d it in the most bizarre fashion imaginable.
But again, they say they have what it takes to fulfill this season’s mandate, which was to win a Super Bowl.
What a joke.
At least Shanahan broke the charade for a moment on Sunday, allowing a bit of truth to squeak out from behind the podium in the aftermath of Sunday’s calamity.
“Thought it should have been closer than 21-3 at halftime,” Shanahan said.
Wait, no, it wasn’t that one.
But rather, when referencing why this season has gone off the rails, he said, “We’re not as good of a team as those past [49ers] teams.”
Now, there’s some truth.
Every team has low points, even the three-straight NFC Championship teams the Niners put on the field from 2021 to 2023. Last year’s Niners team, the favorite to win the Super Bowl, and a squad who had a chance to win the big game in overtime, lost three straight games mid-season.
But amid all the lows, not one has put together the back-to-back duds the Niners have. This is a nadir, folks.
In back-to-back weeks, they’ve met teams that will actually be in the mix for the title come January. They were have lost by a combined score of 73-20.
The Niners aren’t in their class. They’ve aged out of it.
McCaffrey’s season ended before it started. After over 2,000 touches in his NFL career, it’s fair to wonder if he’ll ever be the same game-breaking back once he does return from this latest injury.
It’s clear Deebo Samuel isn’t the same player he was even last season. It’s hard to imagine the old Deebo returning in 2025 — if Samuel returns to the 49ers at all.
Trent Williams and Nick Bosa were both sidelined for a second straight game Sunday. We can only guess if they’ll play Sunday against the Bears.
Warner is gutting it out every week, playing on a broken bone in his ankle, but you could fill a highlight reel with plays that attacked him to big gains or touchdowns on Sunday.
And Brock Purdy still can’t perform in bad weather, which seems like a bad trait for a player expected to win in December and January. Yes, even for a California-based team.
The 2024 49ers were billed as a last-dance-type team, assembled to make one last run at the Super Bowl. Perhaps subsequently, this team has acted like they were entitled to such an ending since mini-camp in the spring.
That ensured that this team’s last dance was, in fact, in Las Vegas in February.
And perhaps everyone but the 49ers seems to know it, too.
One last note of the bizarre: Niners tight end and eternal optimist George Kittle referenced a speech Shanahan gave back in 2018, which quoted the Will Ferrell comedy Semi-Pro.
In the movie, a bear is on the loose in a basketball arena, and Ferrell demands that nobody panic.
“I don’t think there’s a bear in the building, but nobody needs to panic,” Kittle said.
And, while I don’t quite follow the metaphor, he is right.
The Bears are coming to town next week, but the time to panic was weeks ago. And with the season now done and dusted, there’s not much use in panicking now.