A familiar ring? The 49ers’ shot at 6th Super Bowl title hinges on Bosa, quarterbacks
Brent Jones held out his Super Bowl ring from the 1994 season, giving George Kittle a good look.
“Unfortunately,” Jones said on stage Tuesday in front of hundreds of 49ers fans, “this is the most recent 49ers Super Bowl ring.”
The ring features five Lombardi Trophies made up of diamonds shaped like footballs. It’s modest by today’s standards, which now feature rings cascaded in jewels. Times have changed. But the question facing Kittle and this year’s 49ers is the same as it’s been since Jones won that ring: Are the 49ers ready to add to their Lombardi Trophy collection?
When the 49ers thumped the Chargers 49-26 in January of 1995, their five championships were the most in the NFL. They were undefeated in five Super Bowl appearances, then fell twice after the 2012 and 2019.
Since that last title, the 49ers have been passed by the Patriots and Steelers; they have six championships each while the 49ers have toiled among the league’s bottom-feeders after the turn of the century. They’ve reached the playoffs six times in the last 20 years. They had 16 postseason berths in the previous 20.
“There’s five Lombardi’s on it,” Jones told Kittle, former 49ers tight end to current 49ers tight end, while pointing to his ring.
“You know what brother?” Jones continued. “This is the year – and you’re going to be the guy with six Lombardis and all the bling that comes with it.”
Naturally, the crowd adorned in red and gold at Concord Pavilion erupted. Some wore jerseys from the 1980s and some wore Kittle’s No. 85 or Nick Bosa’s 97.
Jones was presenting Kittle with the first Dwight Clark Legacy Award, given to the current 49er that best exemplifies Clark’s team-first attitude. It was a highlight of the annual Dwight Clark Legacy event, where 49ers players, coaches and executives of the past come together to tell stories and raise money for the Golden Heart Fund designed to help former players in their post-football lives.
Jones’ ring served as a reminder of what’s a stake for one of the NFL’s legacy franchises this season. A team that has one of the best rosters in the NFL – and a promising offensive-minded head coach – has a standard to live up to created by those champions of the past.
“This is a special team,” Jones said, “and a special head coach in Kyle Shanahan. … When you have a good locker room and you have the talent, nothing can stop you.”
The 49ers in recent seasons have taken steps to acknowledge their past. Murals on walls in and around the locker room inside Levi’s Stadium feature Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Steve Young, Ronnie Lott and others. That wasn’t always the case when the team moved into the Santa Clara stadium in 2014 and away from storied Candlestick Park in South San Francisco.
“One thing I learned at Iowa,” said Kittle, a former University of Iowa Hawkeye, “was you want to leave the jersey in a better place. And when I look back and I see highlights and you see the Super Bowl trophies, and you see guys that won those trophies and they’re around the building, those guys left their jerseys in a better place.
“They did it consistently day in and day out. They played football the right way, they did it the right way, and we’re just trying to do those same things, the right way.”
The 49ers’ talented roster paired with championship memories make expectations sky-high in 2021. Fans will be allowed back in stadiums following last season amid the pandemic when San Francisco finished a miserable 6-10. The year was marred by injuries to their best players and a five-week stay in Arizona after Santa Clara County banned contact sports amid COVID-19 precautions.
But those expectations come with unprecedented circumstances, making this season more fascinating than most in recent memory.
The quarterback balance
The unprecedented circumstances revolve around Shanahan’s hand-picked quarterback dynamic.
If you haven’t heard, the 49ers traded up nine spots in the recent NFL draft to take little-known prospect Trey Lance from North Dakota State. They traded pick No. 12 and first-round selections in 2022 and 2023, as well as a 2022 third-round pick to the Dolphins. It’s the most the team has given up in a trade in its history.
It was also the highest a team has drafted a quarterback just one season removed from a Super Bowl appearance in league history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. It surpassed the Packers’ selection of Don Horn at No. 25 in 1967.
It leaves Shanahan threading a delicate needle. He knows he has a roster capable of getting back to the Super Bowl with incumbent quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, but he’s also trying to develop Lance for the long haul. After all, Lance played in just one game during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season after getting the full season as a starter the year prior.
That year, as a redshirt freshman in 2019, Lance led the Bison to an FCS National Championship. They were the first college team at any level to finish 16-0 since 1894, and he set the NCAA record with 287 passes thrown without an interception. But he wasn’t facing top competition like other college prospects the 49ers passed over, like Alabama’s Mac Jones and Ohio State’s Justin Fields, who played full seasons last fall at met in the College Football National Championship Game.
If and when Lance starts back-to-back games, it would mark the first time since Dec. 21, 2019 and Jan. 11, 2020. That’s 610 days from the season opener in Detroit on Sept. 12.
Which is among the reasons Shanahan will incorporate the 21-year-old into the offense even if he hasn’t deemed Lance good enough to supplant Garoppolo as the starter — for now.
The 49ers since late August began incorporating Lance in with the first-team offense. Shanahan in the preseason finale against the Raiders implemented a quarterback rotation with Lance and Garoppolo which might be a sign to come for the regular season.
It would certainly buck the trend of what typically works in the NFL. Teams that trot out multiple quarterbacks do it because they don’t have enough belief in one, which is why the position is one of the most coveted in all of sports. Shanahan has belief in both the veteran and rookie.
For now, Shanahan has indicated Garoppolo gives the team the best chance to win, but he also believes Lance’s athleticism and big arm could create a dynamic offense that could give defensive coordinators fits.
When asked about striking the balance between contending this season and developing Lance for the future, Shanahan said his first priority is winning this season.
“And that’s what you owe to an organization,” Shanahan said. “That’s what you owe to your building. That’s what you owe to all the players and coaches on the team who are grinding every single week. Whether it’s players, whether it’s coaches, whether it’s personnel people, you do what you can to win. And if you’re not, I don’t feel like you’re being fair to people.”
Lance at times throughout training camp lit up the practice field. Over a two-day span he threw two incompletions, combined, during team drills, leaving many to wonder if he would be in a position to overtake Garoppolo sooner than expected.
But Lance was less precise in preseason games. His accuracy and footwork (two knocks he faced coming into the draft) got sloppy. He completed just 19 of 41 passes (46%) for 276 yards, though he did have highlights like an 80-yard touchdown to receiver Trent Sherfield in the opener, two touchdown throws against the Chargers and a touchdown scamper in the finale against the Las Vegas Raiders. He also had a league-high nine drops from his targets on catchable throws. His fastballs, at times, were too hot for his receivers to handle.
Lance’s supreme talent has been evident — as has his inexperience, which is a leading reason Shanahan seems poised to mix him in with Garoppolo during the regular season and not make him the starter.
“You always try to think of when it’s your decision, ‘Hey, what helps us win’ and keep it there,” Shanahan said. “At the same time, I get spending the draft picks to get a young quarterback and you’ve got to do what’s right for that guy too. And I think what has been tough on Trey is he didn’t get to play football all last year.
“So regardless of what happens, I’m always trying to make sure that Trey doesn’t go another year without playing football. We’re going to make sure that we do what’s best for him. Getting him reps on the practice field, hopefully in games too and we’ll see how this all pans out. But my order of thinking always starts with what’s best for this organization, what gives our organization the best chance to win. And then after that I’m always thinking of the individual.”
Dependent on defense?
The 49ers had one of the best defenses in the NFL in 2019. And that team will be the measuring stick for this one, if it can stay healthy.
That defense was spearheaded by a ferocious group of pass rushers headlined by rookie Nick Bosa and veteran DeForest Buckner, who has since been traded to the Indianapolis Colts.
Bosa appeared in just five quarters in 2020. He suffered a torn ACL in his left knee early in Week 2 against the New York Jets in a game that also saw Garoppolo suffer a high ankle sprain that hampered him throughout the season. Bosa is back and expected to play Week 1 after not playing in the preseason. He skipped every preseason game in 2019 as well and didn’t miss a game that season.
Near the end of training camp, Bosa, who won Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2019, made a strong impression on eight-time Pro Bowl left tackle Trent Williams, who lined up against him.
“I don’t know how he could have gotten stronger,” Williams said, “but he did.”
Bosa is known as a fierce trainer and reports indicated he was vigorous in his recovery from the knee injury. He was given every third day off from practice throughout training camp. He received good marks from his coaches and teammates for his individual work.
Bosa weighs roughly 260 pounds. He rolls up his jersey during practice to show off a six-pack of abs and wears short game pants to show off his dinosaur-like quads. Williams, a possible Hall of Fame left tackle, weighs 320 pounds. And there were times when the two practiced against each other that Bosa would drive Williams back toward the quarterback with a bull rush, which would be a new wrinkle to his pass rushing repertoire.
“I feel like he came back with a recipe of moves just for me,” Williams said.
If Bosa can stay healthy and improve on his rookie season, when he was one of the best players on the field in the Super Bowl against the Chiefs, it could go a long way toward the 49ers achieving their goals in 2021.
That might include a new batch of rings with six trophies on it that George Kittle could show off to Brent Jones.
