It’s rare to ask a full roster of 53 players to sum up their season and hear the same response. But for the 49ers in 2024, one word keeps coming up: weird.
Following a 12-5 season and a trip to the Super Bowl last February, San Francisco revamped its defense, endured holdouts from stars Trent Williams and Brandon Aiyuk, and entered 2024 looking poised to control the NFC.
Yet, apart from home wins against the struggling Jets and Patriots, the 49ers have dropped games to the Vikings, Rams, and Cardinals, leaving them at 2-3. Even more concerning, they held 10-point leads in the fourth quarter of two of those games.
San Francisco Chronicle columnist Michael Silver spoke with several 49ers about their season. Cornerback Charvarius Ward summed it up: “This year, for sure, it feels weird. It feels real, real weird.
“I mean, hopefully, it’ll turn around, but it’s just really peculiar. We’ve got a lot of talent, and we’re losing games we’re supposed to win.”
‘It Does Feel Weird’ Ward wasn’t alone in his assessment. Cornerback Deommodore Lenoir shared a similar sentiment after the loss to the Cardinals.
“Yeah, losing to Arizona — it does feel weird,” Lenoir said. “In my four years here, we don’t do that (often). So, I can agree with that.”
The 49ers had, in fact, won their last four matchups against the Cardinals before Sunday’s loss.
Silver also quoted fullback Kyle Juszczyk, who noted that while the 49ers aren’t in full panic mode, there’s something off about their inability to close out games and beat teams they’re expected to handle.
It is… strange.
“I mean, it’s weird. It’s not like everything’s fine, but it’s also not like the world’s crumbling,” Juszczyk remarked.
49ers Injuries, 4th-Quarter Woes Can Be Fixed The 49ers can take comfort in two factors that might make this season feel less strange as it progresses. First, they’ve been hit with a series of injuries. The most significant has been Christian McCaffrey’s absence, as he’s been on injured reserve and has yet to play this season. While Jordan Mason has filled in admirably, McCaffrey’s unique versatility is a critical piece of the 49ers’ offense.
The team has also dealt with injuries on both the offensive and defensive lines and will now be without kicker Jake Moody for a few weeks due to a high ankle sprain. Losing a kicker? That certainly adds to the strangeness.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan, however, doesn’t view these issues as weird. Instead, he’s focused on the execution failures that led to these frustrating losses.
“It comes down to specifics,” Shanahan told reporters on Monday. “It’s hard to give a generic answer, but in these two games — division games that we should’ve won with the lead we had in the second half — I thought this one was worse than the Rams game. We got sloppier in terms of turnovers and not scoring in the second half.
“When you have a lead, you need to finish. The way you finish is to keep scoring. If you’re not doing that, you can’t turn it over, and you’ve got to stop people at the end.”
