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Nick Wagoner, ESPN Staff Writer
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — San Francisco 49ers guard Aaron Banks was minutes into an early training camp interview session when he was asked about a costly mistake by the offensive line late in Super Bowl LVIII.
Tension lingered in the air for about five seconds before Banks mumbled a response.
“Sore subject,” Banks said.
A few more seconds went by before Banks arrived at a non-answer, choosing to pass on responding and scanning the room for any other question.
Here he was, 169 days after the 49ers’ overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, and it appeared it was still too soon to relive the latest in the Niners’ expanding list of difficult postseason defeats.
Such is the cloud that looms over all things 49ers as they prepare to open the 2024 season Monday night against the New York Jets (8:15 ET, ESPN/ABC/ESPN+) and take another shot at winning the franchise’s sixth Lombardi Trophy.
Losing on the biggest stage leads to concerns about a Super Bowl hangover. The pain of climbing the postseason mountain again cuts deeper because of the four misses in the past five seasons.
It’s the blown fourth-quarter Super Bowl leads to the Chiefs in Las Vegas this past February, as well as in Miami after the 2019 season. It’s a dropped interception in the NFC Championship Game against the Los Angeles Rams in January 2022. It’s quarterback Brock Purdy‘s devastating right elbow injury early in the NFC Championship Game in January 2023 against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The toll of those disappointments — mentally, physically and financially — weigh heavily on these 49ers.
Mentally, there’s no one way to process the emotions and move past so many close calls, and the physical cost of repeated deep postseason journeys is every bit as daunting. The extra mileage from 12 postseason games over the past five years has led to changes in offseason workout schedules, surgeries to repair lingering injuries and newfangled ways to recover.
Financially, the Niners’ continued commitment to keep their best players with big-money contracts means there’s a reckoning coming soon — starting with Purdy’s expected extension — that could make this the final opportunity for their nucleus to break through and win it all.
Training camp offered some potentially ominous signs the Super Bowl window could be closing. Wideout Brandon Aiyuk and offensive tackle Trent Williams did not practice until they were given bigger contracts, and San Francisco canceled joint practices with the New Orleans Saints because it had too many injuries to get through those sessions. At their worst, the Niners had 23 players not participating in practice, mostly because of injury.
“The whole goal is to get to the season and be ready to play football,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “The offseason, though, especially this year, how short it’s been, I think it’s a mental break just as much as anything. … We know what we put into this. We know how long it goes and not just with your body but the mind I think more than anything.”
All of which makes summoning the energy to go through it all again — in hopes that this time will be different — a formidable task for a team that must thread the needle between preserving itself for the postseason while playing well enough to get there.
“Just complete honesty, it’s brutal,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “In order to get to where you want to go, this part right here that we’re in, it’s got to suck. … It’s got to hurt. If it doesn’t, that means you’re not doing it hard enough. You’re not doing it right.”
LESS THAN TWO weeks after they trudged off the field and into the locker room following the loss to the Chiefs in February, 49ers tight end George Kittle, running back Christian McCaffrey, fullback Kyle Juszczyk and their significant others headed to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
For Kittle and Juszczyk, both of whom were around for the Niners’ previous Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs, the escape was part of their understanding that the best way to grieve is to be around those who have been through the same thing.
“Sometimes it’s like we’re laughing, we’re laughing, and then you make a quick joke about the Super Bowl and we’re like, f—,” Juszczyk said. “And then everyone is quiet for a second and you feel those emotions. That’s part of the grieving process.”
Cornerback Deommodore Lenoir was not around for the first Super Bowl loss to Kansas City, but in his three years in the league, he has been to at least the NFC Championship Game every season and played a prominent role in Super Bowl LVIII.
The fourth-year corner never fathomed the possibility of losing to the Chiefs, which only made it harder. So hard, in fact, Lenoir says he shut himself out from the world and “don’t think I even talked to anyone for two weeks.”
For others, the only way to move to the future was to revisit the past. That was part of Purdy’s process, albeit after escaping the disappointment for a bit to get married.
After arriving for the offseason program in April, Purdy watched the Super Bowl loss multiple times with coach Kyle Shanahan and quarterbacks coach Brian Griese.
Among the plays Purdy would like to have back was a third-down incompletion for receiver Jauan Jennings in the fourth quarter. A better read to an open Aiyuk likely would have resulted in a first down that could have helped the Niners run the clock down and kick a game-winning field goal as time expired.
“Those are the kind of plays that run through my mind when I think about the Super Bowl,” Purdy said.
Of course, even as various 49ers make peace with the loss, a reminder is never far away. For a few months after the game, Lenoir felt like he couldn’t go anywhere without seeing a Chiefs hat or T-shirt.
“It just kind of hits you in waves,” Kittle said. “You get to a point and it’s like, this just sucks. And the farther away you get from it, the less you think about it.”
THE WEAR AND tear of an NFL season is different for every player, but it’s also not exclusive to them. Linebacker Dre Greenlaw wasn’t the only Niner to tear an Achilles during the Super Bowl.
Defensive backs coach Daniel Bullocks was standing on the sideline in the third quarter when safety Ji’Ayir Brown intercepted Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. In the ensuing celebration, Bullocks was jumping up and down celebrating when he felt an odd twinge in his leg. It wasn’t until after the game when the adrenaline wore off on the sideline that Bullocks realized something was wrong.
When he tried to head to the locker room, Bullocks couldn’t walk. Five days later, he went into surgery to repair a torn Achilles, the same operation from the same surgeon on the same day Greenlaw had his repaired.
The time spent rehabbing in the months that followed allowed Bullocks, who has been on Shanahan’s staff since 2017, the chance to survey his own physical and mental toll.
“I evaluate myself and then I evaluate my players,” Bullocks said. “And then once I come up with what I need to get better at and what they need to get better at, that’s what we’re going to focus on moving forward … and hopefully that gets us a chance to get back to the Super Bowl. Not only get back to the Super Bowl but win it.”
For that to happen, the Niners will need to stay healthy. After multiple injury-plagued seasons, they were one of the healthiest teams in the league in 2023, finishing with 34.5 adjusted games lost (which estimates the impact of injuries on teams), the fourth fewest in the NFL. It was the first time in 10 seasons that the 49ers ranked better than 20th in the category.
That type of luck could be hard to repeat. Nobody knows that better than Kittle, who has made a career of playing through various ailments — like a Grade 3 AC joint sprain and a chipped bone in his right shoulder suffered in the Super Bowl. He also had core muscle surgery on March 1 and couldn’t do any sort of significant training until April.
At one point, his weight dropped from the 240 pounds he usually plays at to closer to 214, a weight he estimated he hadn’t seen on a scale since 2012, his freshman year at the University of Iowa.
It took Kittle until just before training camp to get his weight back into the 242-245 range, but the altered offseason approach also forced him to slow down and take it easier on his body.
“That process was weird for me, but looking back on it, I think it’s going to be really beneficial for me,” Kittle said. “It’s going to save some wear and tear on my body.”
Kittle wasn’t the only Niner forced to alter his approach to offseason workouts. Defensive end Nick Bosa normally takes time off after the season before diving back into workouts.
This year, however, Bosa realized the 80 games and 3,708 snaps he has played since entering the league in 2019 required a different offseason regimen that builds in more time to rest.
“As I go on in my career, I understand that you have to build it up at the right times and especially when you’re playing 20-game seasons, just building it up slow and peaking at the right time,” Bosa said.
Niners veterans don’t hesitate to share tips on how to recover and prepare their bodies for another long run, either. Juszczyk and Kittle are devout believers in stem cell therapy. Juszczyk went to Panama twice this offseason for the multiday therapy sessions. Juszczyk is also adamant about beginning the day with a plunge in the cold tub, usually set to 38 degrees, as well as daily red light therapy and plenty of time spent in the sauna.
Even McCaffrey has tweaked his offseason schedule.
“If you’re going to play hard and train hard, you need to recover just as hard,” McCaffrey said. “Our guys have the right mindset, and if it means resting a little bit after the season, then that’s what it takes, then so be it. It’s nice having a lot of veterans who are mature guys who know how to do it, who have been through it because we know what it takes to get our own individual mind, body and soul ready to play.”
THE NINERS ARE facing the very real possibility this will be the final chance for this group of players to win a Super Bowl together.
The offseason revealed cracks in San Francisco’s salary cap outlook. The Niners are paying Bosa (first in annual average value among defensive ends), McCaffrey (first), Warner (first), Kittle (third), Juszczyk (first), wideouts Aiyuk (tied for fifth) and Deebo Samuel Sr. (14th), Williams (third) and defensive tackle Javon Hargrave (tied for 12th) at or near the top of their position groups.
With McCaffrey and Jennings signing offseason extensions, Purdy set for a payday next offseason and the lengthy process of Aiyuk’s and Williams’ contract negotiations, no summer topic has permeated Niners-land more than how they will divvy up their resources in 2024 and beyond.
The 49ers are unlikely to be able to keep all of their stars given Purdy could receive the biggest raise in NFL history. Greenlaw, Banks, safety Talanoa Hufanga and cornerbacks Lenoir and Charvarius Ward are among the 24 Niners scheduled for unrestricted free agency.
“We’re trying to have success right now, first and foremost, but always keep in mind of [looking] out into the future,” general manager John Lynch said. “That’s what we’ll continue to do. That’s our charge, that’s who we are as an organization. We’re going to push each year to compete for championships and do so, I think, in a responsible way, and that’s what we try to do.”
These Niners are again considered legitimate contenders but — in addition to the mental and physical anguish — there are more challenges lurking.
ESPN Analytics gives the 49ers the best chance to win Super Bowl LIX (13.2%, per the Football Power Index) but only three teams have won the Super Bowl the year after losing it, the most recent coming in Super Bowl LI, when the New England Patriots beat the Atlanta Falcons.
On top of that, the 49ers are going to be one of the most-traveled teams, with 24,575 miles (fifth most in the NFL). And for the second straight year, the Niners will have the worst rest differential in the league with 21 fewer days of rest than their opponents. They’ll face four teams coming off their byes (the Indianapolis Colts are the only other team that has more than two).
To manage the physical toll, Shanahan expanded the list of players getting “veteran days” during training camp. As many as nine players got the occasional day off or at least reduced reps during team drills.
That begs the question: Is the 49ers’ gas tank close to empty even before the season starts?
Shanahan used an August meeting to remind his team what it’s supposed to look like at its best.
He showed the defense its first 20 plays from last November’s 34-3 win against Jacksonville. He then showed the offense a random assortment of 20 of its best plays from last season.
For the veterans, it was a reminder of what the 49ers can be when rested and ready. For those who are new to the team, it was a blueprint for how to fit in.
“It was impactful,” Juszczyk said. “We all kind of got up and we were all fired up leaving that meeting.”
Ultimately, these 49ers know their legacy will be determined by what happens in January and February, even if they can’t allow themselves to begin contemplating those possibilities until they’ve traversed the treacherous path back to the postseason — again.
“You can’t go into a year thinking like, damn, I hope we can make that next step,” Warner said. “The last thing on our mind is just making it back there. We are trying to put together the best team possible for if and when that moment does come, we got to be the best version of ourselves when we get there.”