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49ers overrated per same writer who believes they lost offseason

Published

2 years ago

June 25, 2024

49ers overrated per same writer who believes they lost offseason

There’s a particular writer at the Athletic who isn’t a believer in the 2024 San Francisco 49ers.

After naming the 49ers an offseason loser because they lost Arik Armstead and Javon Kinlaw, and hired a new defensive coordinator, Mike Jones of the Athletic listed San Francisco among the overrated teams heading into this NFL season.

Again, Jones focuses heavily on the losses on the defensive line:

Kyle Shanahan always gives them a chance, and Brock Purdy again has a talented supporting cast, although Brandon Aiyuk faces an uncertain future. Questions loom over the defense, however, with first-year coordinator Nick Sorensen directing a unit that lost Arik Armstead and Javon Kinlaw to free agency and must deal with the extended absence of Dre Greenlaw, who is recovering from Achilles surgery. The 49ers hope to put another heartbreaking Super Bowl defeat in the past and make another run at a ring, but doing so could prove more challenging than many expect.

It’s worth noting the 49ers replaced Armstead and Kinlaw with Maliek Collins and Jordan Elliott. The fixation on Kinlaw is interesting given the defensive tackle’s general lack of effectiveness last season, but it wouldn’t be Earth-shattering if Elliott was a better rotational DT option for San Francisco this season. Whether Collins and others can replace Armstead in the aggregate remains to be seen and is certainly a sizable question mark for the 49ers to answer this year.

The Greenlaw absence is also a pretty significant blow. San Francisco signed former All-Pro De’Vondre Campbell to replace him. Second-year LBs Dee Winters and Jalen Graham could also be in the mix to start at Will LB, but none of those three are liable to be as effective as Greenlaw is.

Alas, calling the 49ers ‘overrated’ when they were a couple plays from winning the Super Bowl last year seems like a stretch based on the reasoning listed. After all, both Pro Football Focus and ESPN agree San Francisco has the best roster in the NFL.

A better argument would focus more heavily on the 49ers’ offensive line which they made only marginal moves to improve this offseason. There’s a case to be made they could conceivably be worse on the offensive front which would certainly have an impact on Purdy. Last year in his first full season as a starter Purdy had pretty good turnover luck which could wind up coming back to bite him and the 49ers this season.

There are also some questions in the secondary with uncertainty about who will start in nickel packages with cornerbacks Deommodore Lenoir and Charvarius Ward. Strong safety Talanoa Hufanga is coming back from an ACL tear which leaves a question mark about whether he’ll return to All-Pro form, and second-year safety Ji’Ayir Brown is an unproven commodity who figures to start alongside Hufanga.

Those are a lot of hurdles for Sorensen to clear in his first season as a defensive coordinator, which are much bigger reasons to have concerns than just the losses of Armstead and Kinlaw.

Injury luck was also, for the most part, on the 49ers’ side last season. They had the injuries to Hufanga in Week 11 and to Greenlaw during the Super Bowl, but outside of that they avoided major injuries and were relatively healthy going into the final game of the season. It wouldn’t be irrational if a person wanted to bet against injury luck for them again in 2024.

For now though on paper the 49ers figure to field one of the best teams in the NFL. Whether they can be just the second team since the turn of the century to return to the Super Bowl after losing it remains to be seen, but saying they’re ‘overrated’ for the reasons listed in the Athletic feels a tad off base.

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San Francisco, CA

1 dead in house fire in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood

Published

2 hours ago

March 25, 2026

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1 dead in house fire in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood

One person was found dead Tuesday night in a house fire in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood.

The one-alarm fire occurred in the 500 block of Dwight Street and caused major damage to the interior of the home, the Fire Department said.

Firefighters extinguished the fire and remained on the scene checking for hidden fire in the walls and roof.

One person was declared deceased at the scene. The exact manner and cause of the person’s death will be determined by a medical examiner. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

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San Francisco, CA

Barricaded suspect in standoff with police in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood

Published

14 hours ago

March 25, 2026

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Barricaded suspect in standoff with police in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood

Updated on: March 24, 2026 / 6:04 PM PDT
/ CBS San Francisco

A person was barricaded inside a residence in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon in a standoff with officers, police said.

The San Francisco Police Department said the situation was happening at the Cadillac Hotel, a historic single-room occupancy building on Eddy Street between Jones and Leavenworth streets. Officers responded to a report of an assault at the hotel at about 2 p.m. and determined that the suspect was barricaded in one of the units, police said.

Crisis negotiators and other specialists also responded and were developing a plan for a peaceful resolution to the standoff, police said. An ambulance and paramedics were also standing by at the hotel.

************AVOID THE AREA****************
Barricaded subject at 380 Eddy. SFPD and SFFD on scene including our TEMS (Tactical Emergency Medical Services). Eddy St. between Leavenworth St. and Jones St. is closed to traffic. #SFFD pic.twitter.com/cQqsqGL3Tx
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) March 24, 2026

Members of the public were asked to avoid the area. The San Francisco Fire Department said Eddy Street between Leavenworth and Jones was closed to traffic.

The Cadillac Hotel was built in 1907 and has been listed as a San Francisco Designated Landmark since 1985, becoming the first nonprofit single-room occupancy hotel west of the Mississippi. For decades, it also housed Newman’s Gym, one of the oldest boxing facilities in the U.S., where boxers such as Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Joe Louis trained.

Today, the hotel provides supportive housing for approximately 160 low-income residents.

In 2015, the hotel became the site for The Tenderloin Museum.

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Pain at the pump: One gas station in S. San Francisco near $7 a gallon

Published

1 day ago

March 24, 2026

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Pain at the pump: One gas station in S. San Francisco near a gallon

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – You’re not dreaming. Gas prices really are that high.

National average $4 a gallon, California $6

In fact, at the Shell station at 248 S. Airport Boulevard in South San Francisco, regular gas was going for $6.89 a gallon on Tuesday, about four weeks after the United States and Israel started a war in Iran.

Most people didn’t even stop to fill up; instead, drivers seemed to just pass the station by.

Juan Buenrostro did stop, though, and said it costs him about $300 to fill up his truck. He lives in Santa Cruz and had to drive to the Marina in San Francisco.

“It’s been crazy, man,” he said. “I have to work extra hours to make extra income. We’ve been struggling.”

That price is roughly double what the national average is. AAA said the average price of gas was $3.97 a gallon as of Tuesday, and the average price in California was $5.82.

Prices are so high that the state’s petroleum watchdog, the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight, has launched an investigation into possible price gouging, specifically at gas stations charging $7 or $8 a gallon.

A Chevron in downtown Los Angeles was selling gas for $8.71 a gallon this week.

Gas was selling for $8.71 a gallon at a downtown Los Angeles Chevron station. Photo: Fox11. March 23, 2026

Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward and a former senior adviser to the U.S. Secretary of Energy, said $10 gas is not out of the question under certain conditions.

“Can you imagine a world where we’re paying $10 a gallon? … Yes, I can,” Gordon said.

Gas prices on March 24, 2026. Source: AAA

Last year, prices lower

A year ago, the average price in the United States was $3.13 a gallon, and the average price in California was $4.64 a gallon, according to AAA.

The highest average price for gas in California ever recorded was $6.44 on June 14, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

War in Iran

Regular gas was selling for $6.89 a gallon at a Shell gas station in S. San Francisco. March 24, 2026

Oil and gas prices have been soaring since the war in Iran began a month ago, and when Iran began retaliating against the United States by choking off the Strait of Hormuz – a critical oil passageway.

Gas prices are likely to remain elevated for some time, even if the war ends soon, because shipping and production have been disrupted and will take time to recover. Economists now expect slower growth this spring and for the year as a whole, as dollars that are spent on gas are less likely to be used for restaurant meals, new clothes, or entertainment.

Lower income households bearing the brunt

Lower and middle-income households are likely to be hit particularly hard, because they receive lower refunds, while spending a greater proportion of their earnings on gas.

Neale Mahoney, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, calculates that gas prices nationwide could peak in May at $4.36 a gallon, based on oil price forecasts by Goldman Sachs, followed by slow declines for the rest of the year. The notion that gas prices decline much more slowly than they rise is so ingrained among economists that they refer to it as the “rocket and feathers” phenomenon.

In that scenario, the average household would pay $740 more in gas this year, nearly equal to the $748 increase in refunds that the Tax Foundation has estimated the average household will receive.

And it’s only worse in California.

The impact will likely worsen the “K-shaped” narrative around the U.S. economy, analysts said, in which higher income households have fared better than lower-income households. The bottom 10% of earners spend nearly 4% of their incomes on gasoline, Pantheon Macroeconomics estimates, while the top 10% spend just 1.5%.

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