PHOTO: D. ROSS CAMERON
We did our show from Levi’s Stadium Thursday, and nothing says 49ers football more than Nick Bosa in a backwards cap telling you that a photo with Deadmaus at a concert in Miami eventually got him and his teammates invited to see Dead & Co. at the Sphere in Vegas.
Oh, and that “Althea” is his favorite Dead song.
Or maybe nothing says 49ers football more than George Kittle enthusiastically giving you the back story of how he wound up taking a selfie video singing Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” with Taylor Swift herself.
Put another way, the 49ers have some popular and familiar veteran leaders who are becoming 49ers icons for this generation.
George Kittle. Nick Bosa. Fred Warner. Trent Williams. Christian McCaffrey. Deommodore Lenoir. Oh, and a wealthy quarterback named Brock Purdy.
Throw in Jauan Jennings (hopefully happy eventually) and a healed-Brandon Aiyuk by midseason and these are the names that give 49ers fans hope that the 2025 Niners can contend into the calendar year, early 2026.
Because after that, sports fans? It’s a whole lot of hope.
And we know about the history of hope as a strategy.
Well, that’s maybe a bit harsh. Drafting edge rusher Mykel Williams from Georgia, defensive tackle Alfred Collins from Texas, nickel back Upton Stout from Western Kentucky, linebacker Nick Martin from Oklahoma State, defensive tackle CJ West from Indiana and safety Marques Sigle from Kansas State is more than hope — it’s scouting and strategy and analysis and fit.
But counting on six rookies — maybe more at some point — to step right in and play January-level NFL ball is a leap of faith, indeed.
Funny enough, after the Golden State Warriors inspired all kinds of mixed reaction for attempting to pull off a “two timelines” approach to the Steph-Draymond/Kuminga-Podz generation, it appears the 49ers are trying something similar.
Kyle Shanahan gave a substantive interview to Tim Kawakami of the SF Standard this week, enunciating just where the 49ers are as a competitive franchise. He addressed the giant void left by the departure of Dre Greenlaw and Deebo Samuel and a raft of others in March, but did not see the 49ers going full Chicago White Sox or Pittsburgh Pirates on the fan base. Instead, Shanahan described the transition as necessary to re-start another three-year window of competitiveness or what he called the goal of “sustained success.”
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the whole two timeline thing, in terms of winning a Super Bowl. In fact, I should say I feel fairly confident that a Super Bowl championship this year is a reach. I’m not ruling it out. That’s why they play the games. But it’s a reach.
I understand why the 49ers did this. In the modern NFL, securing your QB is priority #1, and the cost is steep. There is a world where the 49ers could have discarded Purdy and signed, say, Sam Darnold to a short-term deal on a discount, or tried to start over in the draft. But starting over and taking fliers at QB is never a good thing, as I was just saying to my good friends Brian Hoyer and the 2017 49ers.
Purdy is their guy, and he is just the sort of disciplined rule-follower that Shanahan loves. With continued development and a few well-timed scrambles — plus a few stops from that young defense curated by Robert Saleh — the Niners can win a good number of games.
And Shanahan’s argument is that all of the veteran names listed above will be the leaders of the new era.
It’s a reasonable way to look at it. It’s not the stacked 49ers roster of a couple of years ago, but it can be a competitive group. The 49ers believe in their stability and culture.
Now all the the draft picks have to do is get up to speed and learn the 49er Way — not to mention learning the lyrics to “Love Story” and how the Dead can morph from “Scarlet Begonias” into “Fire on the Mountain” as seamlessly as a McCaffrey cutback.
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