This 49ers season is effectively over — and Kyle Shanahan bears plenty of responsibility

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — And in the end, after another postseason heartbreak, after an emotionally exhausting offseason, after the drama-filled holdouts and the gnarly wave of injuries and the personal tragedies, after a star player’s lash-out and, with a team’s hopes hanging in the balance, an infuriating and surreal tap-out, the San Francisco 49ers’ 2024 season finally collapsed under its own weight.

Buried under the wreckage, barely able to speak at an audible volume, was Kyle Shanahan — the man who had the most to do with the 49ers’ failings, and the biggest culprit behind a last-gasp attempt to extend an era that seemed doomed from its inception last February.

Shanahan, the Niners’ eighth-year coach, was standing at a lectern after the defeat that all but mathematically eliminated the defending NFC champions from playoff contention, one that came courtesy of his fiercest professional rival. With a 12-6 victory at Levi’s Stadium on Thursday night, Sean McVay’s Los Angeles Rams (8-6) boosted their playoff hopes while exposing the 49ers (6-8) as a team that lacked the purpose, precision and unity to play beyond the first weekend in January.

In the end, with desperation in the rain-filled Northern California air, Shanahan’s offense couldn’t produce a single touchdown, San Francisco’s special teams were typically sloppy and an uncharacteristically strong defensive effort was marred by veteran linebacker De’Vondre Campbell Sr.’s stunning refusal to enter the game when summoned in the third quarter.

All of that falls on Shanahan — that’s why he sits in the big chair — and he made no attempt to run from it.

“Not good enough,” Shanahan said of the offensive effort he coordinated Thursday, though the words applied to everything about this defeat and to this challenging season.

Those words also served as an epitaph to a six-season stretch in which the 49ers suffered two excruciating Super Bowl defeats to the Kansas City Chiefs, lost a pair of wrenching NFC Championship Games (including one to McVay’s Rams) and assembled a loaded roster stacked with some of the league’s most talented and resilient players.

Together, they built a formidable foundation, won a lot of big games and at times felt indomitable.

What we witnessed Thursday night was the NFL’s equivalent of rubble — and the group charged with cleaning it up, and rising from it, will look much, much different in 2025 and beyond.

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“There’s been a dark cloud over us all season,” veteran cornerback Charvarius Ward told me after the game. “This will be a good offseason for this team to regroup, refocus and try to rekindle the spark.”

Ward, a second-team All-Pro in 2023, is headed for unrestricted free agency next March and is one of the many marquee 49ers who might not be on next year’s roster.

“I don’t know if I’m gonna be back,” Ward continued, “but I know this team is still gonna be great, with or without me.”

That remains to be seen, because Thursday’s faceplant — and, really, this entire season — has underscored how different this 49ers team is from its immediate predecessors.

Once again: Not good enough. Realistically, not even close.

The NFL is a production business, and Shanahan — who along with general manager John Lynch assembled this group, and was charged with coaching it up — will have to wear the stain of his team’s consistently substandard performances. The Niners have just two victories over opponents with winning records (the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and suffered three brutal defeats to division foes after squandering late leads.

On Thursday, with a chance to stay in the NFC West race, they fell woefully short, and produced a lowlight reel in the process.

Wide receiver Deebo Samuel Sr., who complained on social media earlier in the week that he wasn’t getting the ball enough, had a brutal drop that likely cost him a chance to reach the end zone for a game-changing score. The 49ers were penalized for two illegal formation penalties on punts. Shanahan, after Brock Purdy connected with tight end George Kittle on a 33-yard pass early in the game — against a defense that had given up 42 points to the Buffalo Bills four days earlier — got weirdly conservative, calling three consecutive runs in Rams territory and settling for a 53-yard field goal by Jake Moody. And Purdy, coming off his best game of the season, struggled in the rain (a recurring theme) and later threw a brutal end-zone interception with 5:20 remaining and the 49ers in range for a game-tying field goal, essentially killing their chances.

And, amazingly, none of those gaffes came close to being the night’s most ignominious moment. That belonged to Campbell, a veteran linebacker signed in March as a placeholder for Dre Greenlaw — the passionate playmaker who tore his Achilles while running onto the field after a punt during the second quarter of Super Bowl LVIII, and who finally worked his way back Thursday night to try to help save San Francisco’s season.

He almost did, before his body betrayed him. The 27-year-old enforcer, one of the sport’s most criminally underappreciated stars, picked up where he left off in last February’s Super Bowl, before the farfetched injury that helped doom the Niners to defeat.

Had Greenlaw been rusty against the Rams, it would have made plenty of sense.

He wasn’t. Rather, he was the best player on the field.

Greenlaw had eight tackles, many of them prolific and sudden and violent, before leaving the game midway through the third quarter with knee tightness. At that point, Campbell was the next man up.

Campbell, however, did not exactly man up.

Apparently upset over losing his job to Greenlaw — hardly a shocking development to anyone in the 49ers’ locker room, or outside of it — Campbell, according to Shanahan and numerous players, declined to enter the game.

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“He said he didn’t want to play today,” Shanahan said. Campbell, who eventually was sent off the field and into the locker room — almost certainly never to return — was described as “selfish” by Ward and Kittle during postgame interviews.

“That was his plan,” Ward told me. “He had his mind made up. I mean, it’s crazy. He’s not a better player than Dre. You saw that today — (Greenlaw)’s the engine of our defense, the guy who starts everything for us. But you could see (Campbell’s decision not to play) coming for a while.”

The juxtaposition of Campbell quitting on his teammates with the resilience of players like Ward and rookie wide receiver Ricky Pearsall was staggering.

Pearsall, shot through the chest during a robbery attempt shortly before the start of the season, missed six games before returning and making his NFL debut. Ward missed three games after his daughter, Amani Joy, died in October, shortly before her second birthday. (Amani Joy was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect that required surgery.)

After Thursday’s game, Ward opened up to me about the trauma he and his family have endured, doing his best to affirm his commitment to his teammates while acknowledging that football isn’t the preeminent force in his life right now.

“It’s been hard for me personally to go to work every day, every game — even to practice or go to meetings,” he admitted. “I almost left a couple of times. S—, I know fans probably hate me (for saying that), but f— it, it’s real life. It’s bigger than football. This is the hardest time of my life for sure.”

In that context, a football team’s lost season pales in comparison. Yet falling short still hurts. Players and coaches channel an extreme amount of energy, intensity and devotion for the cause, and when they don’t reach their goals, they grieve. And that’s especially true for the head coach.

In the coming weeks and months, Shanahan will have to be real with himself as he reckons with how it all went wrong, and how he and Lynch can try to make it right in 2025, and in the years that follow.

In the meantime, there are three games to play, none of which will likely matter. While noting that the 49ers are technically still in playoff contention, reaching the postseason would require a series of hugely improbable outcomes, and Shanahan acknowledged that the dream of finally winning a championship with this incarnation of his team is basically over. “They say mathematically we still have a chance,” he said. “I’m not too concerned with that right now. … I want to come back and play better football and challenge the character of our team.”

Clearly shaken, Shanahan almost looked as though he had seen a ghost — which, metaphorically, was kind of true. Across the sideline Thursday night was the coach’s former franchise quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, now a backup to the Rams’ Matthew Stafford. And, of course, there was McVay, a former Shanahan assistant who has since challenged him for coaching supremacy, capturing the Lombardi Trophy that has eluded Shanahan and, after bottoming out in 2022, deftly reshaping the Rams on the fly in each of the past two seasons.

Last Sunday, McVay schemed up an offensive outburst that fueled a 44-42 upset victory over the Bills and kept the Rams in hot pursuit of the Seahawks (8-5) in the division race. On Thursday, after L.A. cornerback Darious Williams picked off Purdy’s overthrown deep ball for Jauan Jennings in the end zone with 5:20 remaining, McVay and his players became the closers that Shanahan and his 49ers have struggled all season to be.

When the Rams took over at their own 20-yard line up 9-6 with 5:20 remaining, McVay had no intention of giving the ball back.

“That’s the responsibility I felt,” he said as he walked from the visitors’ locker room to the team bus late Thursday night. “Now, (the 49ers) have a say in that, too.”

Soon, the Rams silenced them. Thirteen plays, 69 yards and only two third downs later, Joshua Karty kicked his fourth field goal to make it a six-point game. Only 20 seconds remained, and the 49ers’ last, desperate gasp ended when Purdy was sacked by Christian Rozeboom at his own 44-yard line with no time remaining — in the game or, for all intents and purposes, the season. Or the era.

“This wasn’t an easy win,” McVay said. “Their defense was really, really good; they were flying around all night. And the elements made it really tough, especially in the first half. But this is a mentally tough team. I like our resilience. I like that we can win in different ways. I like what we’re made of.”

Those used to be sentiments that Shanahan, in all sincerity, could express about his team. In 2024, if he’s being honest, they no longer apply. Shanahan’s players and assistant coaches bear plenty of responsibility, but most of all, it’s on him.

In 2024, the 49ers weren’t good enough, and neither was he.

(Top photo: Kelley L Cox / Imagn Images)