Shanahan and Lynch spent two seasons rebuilding the 49ers. ‘Now we’ve got to win’
The first season for the 49ers under coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch was about setting the culture and rebuilding the tattered roster.
The second was defined by giving quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo the keys to the franchise as one of the NFL’s highest paid players before he went down with a season ending knee injury last September.
The mandate in Year 3 entering 2019 is simple.
“Now we’ve got to win,” longtime left tackle Joe Staley said Friday.
The mood surrounding the 49ers as they reported for training camp this week: handling unfinished business.
Staley, and others, believed San Francisco last season would have been in the running for its first playoff berth since 2013 had Garoppolo stayed healthy. His season-ending left ACL tear was the ultimate death knell for months of optimism created by his splashy arrival in 2017 when he was one of the league’s premier signal callers during his 5-0 stretch as the starter.
The good news for the 49ers, who went 10-22 record during the first two years with Shanahan and Lynch calling the shots, is the NFL is rife with turnarounds. With Garoppolo aiming for 16 games this season, they believe the pieces are in place to contend in the NFC West following three full offseasons of remaking the roster in their visions.
“Expectations are really high,” Staley said. “Day 1, everybody expects to, as a competitor, win. But what it’s going to take is having great practices, developing that mindset in the locker room, developing that expectation as a team that anything but winning, this season especially, is unacceptable.”
Shanahan and Lynch fielded questions from media for nearly 40 minutes Friday as players reported ahead of Saturday’s first practice. There was a theme throughout the press conference inside Levi’s Stadium’s expansive auditorium: It’s time to stop talking about building the right culture and let the wins speak for themselves.
“I think our guys feel that, we feel that,” Shanahan said. “I think that’s why we added certain key players who we thought would help us. But we had a lot of work to do, we felt like, when we got here (in 2017). Just from the roster, just from changing the feeling of how things have gone. I think we’ve brought in the right guys to do that. I love our team.”
The 49ers entered last season as a trendy playoff pick after being energized by Garoppolo’s impressive run to end 2017.
This season, national expectations seem tempered even though the roster is objectively better with the additions of Dee Ford and Nick Bosa to bolster the pass rush, Tevin Coleman to add depth and versatility to the running backs, and second-round draft pick Deebo Samuel as a foundational receiver, as well as the rest of the roster enjoying the continuity of a having the regime in place for a third season.
It could come down to Garoppolo, who has never started more than five games in a year, which has become a more prominent talking point than his early success after being acquired from the New England Patriots.
“It’s crazy what a year can do,” Garoppolo said with a smirk before his face became more serious. “I have so much motivation in myself and I’ve pushed myself so much, that’s all I need. So all the noise on the outside, you kind of just tune it out. ... it’s a good thing when people are talking about you.”
The 49ers’ plan was to turn around the rebuilding project into a playoff contender last year. But Garoppolo’s injury ultimately caused the organization to press pause and aim towards 2019 as the year all the hard work would pay off.
“I was really looking forward to (2018) knowing that Jimmy hadn’t played a lot of ball, but he showed everyone the capability he has to be a very, very good quarterback,” Shanahan said. “And I was really looking forward to going through a full year with him where we all knew he would have some ups and downs. But he had the ability and the mentality that he knew he would continue to climb. And he missed that year, and that is what it is.
“Now he’s done the work to be healthy, and we’re back to this, but Jimmy hasn’t played a lot of football. I think everyone knows he’s a good player and knows he’s talented. But you got to go through some situations and go through playing the position. I’m just so pumped that he’s healthy again that now he can start practicing fully and start trying to prepare him for that moment.”
The pass rush should have sharpened teeth with the additions with Bosa and Ford surrounding budding star DeForest Buckner. Cornerback Richard Sherman has indicated he feels night-and-day better entering his second year with San Francisco than his first, when he spent the offseason recovering from an Achilles tear. He had sutures removed from his Achilles in February, which he likened to a car driving with a nail in its tire.
Sherman was asked about his time with the Seattle Seahawks as perennial contenders and holding his teammates to a winning standard, which is something he’s trying to impart on his less experienced 49ers teammates that struggled throughout last season’s 4-12 finish.
“Those (growing) moments come from practicing and understanding that even when you’re having a bad day, even when things go bad, and everything that could go bad has gone bad, Murphy’s Law, you can still come out of that with a win,” Sherman said. “If you trust each other, if you persevere, if you don’t point the finger, if you don’t push blame and you just encourage each other, you can get out of any situation. I think those things are what training camp is about.”
Suffice to say, the 49ers believe their rebuilding project is over. It’s time to win.
This story was originally published July 27, 2019 at 5:30 AM.
