San Francisco, CA
Kurtenbach: The 49ers must break their nasty habit — in Las Vegas of all places
The 49ers have a nasty habit in big games, and if they bring it to Las Vegas, their Super Bowl dreams will almost certainly become a nightmare.
No one can quite explain why the 49ers have posted slow starts in their four biggest games of the season — at Philadelphia, vs. Baltimore, and both NFC playoff games — and the good news for the 49ers is that it has only brought about one loss.
But the Kansas City Chiefs are a different kind of opponent.
Spot them an early two-score lead, and they will hold it until the confetti falls.
This season’s edition of the Chiefs is not a super team. Up to the start of the playoffs, it became trendy to write them off as Super Bowl contenders — for good reason: The Chiefs’ offense went from No. 1 last year (per DVOA) to No. 8 behind bad wide receiver play and even worse play from offensive tackles. Tight end Travis Kelce didn’t look like his All-Pro self all season, and Mahomes didn’t either. This team had taken a step back, and in the competitive AFC, that was perceived as tantamount to a death sentence.
And here’s the thing: There hasn’t been much improvement. Kelce might be playing better, but Kansas City still has so many of those issues heading into the Super Bowl.
The reason they are in the big game is because they are ruthless.
They might not have the firepower to beat any team they want anymore.
But in addition to one of the best defenses in the NFL, the Chiefs have the experience and knowledge to appropriately manage a game.
It’s all very reminiscent of the Tom Brady Patriots.
It’s become evident this season that the vast majority of NFL pundits are not, in fact, watching the full games. YouTube highlights, perhaps, but not the full game broadcasts or the All-22 film.
As such, the discourse (excuse me while I vomit) around Niners’ quarterback Brock Purdy is that he’s a dink-and-dunk game manager — someone who does very little but gets the ball to his playmakers on screen passes and lets them do the rest.
Meanwhile, Mahomes’ well-deserved reputation as a deep-ball-slinging, devil-may-care talisman persists.
In reality, the roles are completely reversed this season.
Kansas City is running the offense people think the 49ers run.
The 49ers are running the offense that people think Kansas City still runs.
Purdy was one of the NFL’s best and most frequent deep-ball passers this season. He was a gunslinger of the highest order.
Mahomes, meanwhile, has become a screen-pass merchant — his average air yards per throw was sixth lowest in the NFL this season.
That’s the way it had to be for Kansas City, though. Things had to be pared back — the offensive made more simple.
The Chiefs might not have the offensive firepower to beat you anymore, but they won’t beat themselves — they let their opponent take care of the rest.
That’s what Kansas City did in the AFC Playoffs. Miami playing in negative-degree temperatures made that playoff opener a breeze for Kansas City — the Dolphins made it clear from the opening snap that they’d do anything to get back to sub-tropical weather.
Then Buffalo beat itself the following week. The Bills scored with 3:23 to play in the third quarter of that game. They didn’t score again as their offense became solely predicated on Josh Allen running and throwing. He did neither at a high level down the stretch. One-man shows don’t work in the playoffs.
And then, in the AFC Championship Game, the Ravens went out and executed one of the strangest game plans in recent NFL history.
Kansas City scored 17 points in that title game. Had that been known before the contest, everyone would have fairly presumed the Chiefs lost.
But the Chiefs won because Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson — the most extraordinary running quarterback ever — decided to stand in the pocket for eight, nine, ten Mississippi on dropback after dropback.
The Chiefs’ opponents en route to the Super Bowl were not ready for primetime.
Are the 49ers?
This is the fifth massive game the Niners will play this year.
They’re 0-4 with good starts in them.
Against Philadelphia in Week 10 — remember how hyped that game was? — the Niners had negative offensive yards at the start of the second quarter.
Then, against Baltimore on Christmas, everything went wrong for the Niners on offense from the jump.
Green Bay never opened up a big lead in the teams’ NFC Divisional Round contest, but they held the Niners’ offense at bay in the battle of the Bays. The Niners needed a game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter to advance.
And then Detroit put a hurt on the Niners in the NFC Championship Game. If not for a Detroit meltdown that started late in the second quarter, and if not for a comeback for the ages — 27 unanswered second-half points — San Francisco would be watching the Super Bowl on TV like the rest of us.
Philadelphia, Green Bay, and Detroit all showed their own flaws after the Niners showed theirs.
But Kansas City won’t follow suit. This team — led by a Hall of Fame quarterback and head coach — has spent the last few weeks proving they can keep their poker face in Las Vegas.
The Chiefs have played enough playoff football to know that style points don’t mean a thing. You don’t get to skip a round if you blow out a team.
No, it’s survive and advance. The Chiefs might be more cunning than dominant this postseason, but the results are the same.
So, while the 49ers might feel pretty good about themselves (and for good reason) heading into the Super Bowl, after back-to-back comebacks, the better policy would be to play their best football early.
The last time these two teams met in the Super Bowl, Kansas City won with a late push. The 49ers led by 10 and had Kansas City facing a third-and-15 in their own territory with just over seven minutes to play in the game.
Then the Wasp stung.
But the Chiefs don’t hold those kinds of cards this time around.
That Chiefs team was a cobra. This team is a boa constrictor — simple, steady, and suffocating.
As such, a late-game push like the two that lifted the Niners to the Super Bowl is likely not in the cards for a third straight game.
The most important quarter of the Super Bowl might end up being the first.
And the Niners can’t afford to miss it.
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A recent Civil Grand Jury report has identified wildfire risks in San Francisco’s Glen Canyon, warning that vegetation management is needed to reduce the potential for a fire in an area not typically associated with wildfire danger.
The report focuses on the canyon’s large population of Blue Gum eucalyptus trees, an invasive species originally imported from Australia.
Historical photographs show Glen Canyon was largely treeless in the late 1800s, when the land was used primarily as a dairy farm.
The eucalyptus trees were planted after investors believed the fast-growing species could be harvested for timber.
“And these people were so stupid, they didn’t realize they were going to build railroad ties and use the wood for building, and it’s worthless. It warps, it splits. it has no commercial value,” said Rick Carell, a member of the Civil Grand Jury.
While the timber venture failed, the trees remained.
Today, their flammability is a concern for fire safety officials and grand jury members.
MORE: 600 goats graze Poplar Beach in Halfmoon Bay to reduce wildfire risk
“The leaves have a lot of oil in them, and so actually, if it’s very hot, and it’s been very, very dry, they actually explode, because it’s highly flammable. And so, you can see here, look at all the debris right next to this road. So somebody throws a cigarette out into there, and you have a potential fire,” Carell said.
Carell said assessments of the trees have raised additional concerns.
“They evaluated something like 427 eucalyptus trees and 80% of them, back in 2012, were in bad shape,” he said.
Although CAL FIRE has repeatedly rated San Francisco’s wildfire risk as low because of the city’s cool, foggy climate, the grand jury report points to the 2025 Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles as an example of how fires can occur in urban areas where vegetation management is inadequate.
The report notes that Glen Canyon has only two fire hydrants, one near the Glen Park Recreation Center and another near a day camp building.
However, San Francisco’s Emergency Firefighting Water System provides additional resources through reservoirs, high-pressure hydrants and underground cisterns.
One nearby cistern at Chenery and Surrey streets can supply 75,000 gallons of water. Based on a fire engine’s typical pumping rate of 1,500 gallons per minute, that amount of water would be exhausted in about 50 minutes. Additional cisterns are located in surrounding neighborhoods.
MORE: CAL FIRE urging Bay Area residents to create defensible space as wildfire season begins
Despite the concerns, the report concluded that removing all eucalyptus trees is not a practical solution because of the canyon’s steep terrain. Large-scale removal could increase the risk of landslides. Instead, the report recommends managing vegetation by clearing brush and fallen debris and removing diseased trees.
“To remove any brush that might be a fire hazard, if something could really ignite quickly. We’re going to raise up the branches, the lower branches of the tree because that’s where a lot of the problem is for the spread of the fire, and if there are any dead trees that are really hazardous or branches that may hang over the roadway, that we can take them out as well,” said Rachel Gordon of the San Francisco Department of Public Works.
Public Works officials are expected to coordinate closely with CAL FIRE on vegetation management efforts.
“CAL FIRE guys, they train in the type of environment, and so what they do, they get their chainsaws out, they eliminate. They limb the trees, they bring out the debris and that sort of stuff so this is an ideal training site for them,” Carell said.
The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which manages a small portion of the canyon, has already removed trees on its property to prevent them from falling across O’Shaughnessy Avenue, a potential emergency evacuation route.
The agency has also hired habitat experts to remove non-native vegetation and replace it with fire-resistant native species, including coast live oaks.
“That has all these tannins in the foliage that resist fire. You can put a lighter right under that thing in the middle of the hottest day of the year, and it will not burn like these willows. They will not burn, and so that’s what we want to load our parks with instead of having things like the eucalyptus and the pine — which, as we all know, they just burn like a crazy Christmas tree fire,” said Habitat Specialist Josiah Clark.
The majority of the 66-acre canyon is managed by the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department, which agrees that improved coordination among city agencies is essential to maintaining fire safety in the area.
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Presidio Heights is proving to be a center of gravity as luxury housing supply in San Francisco vanishes and the city’s well-to-do scramble to claim their slice of the artificial intelligence industry’s nerve center.
On the same day last week, the city recorded two home sales in the wealthy neighborhood for $9.2 million and $10 million.
The first reflected the fortunes being created by the AI industry. Venture capitalist Kenneth Wallace and his wife, Moriah Lewis, sold their five-bed, 4,755-square-foot home at 3875 Clay Street for $9.2 million. Josh McAdam of Sotheby’s International Realty represented the seller. The property last sold for $6.8 million in 2021.
The buyer initially kept their name hidden behind a Delaware-incorporated LLC named after the property’s address. However, according to public loan documents, the LLC is managed by Daniel Berrios and Kimberly Tan, a couple in their early 30s who graduated from Stanford into the San Francisco tech sector. Berrios works on special projects at OpenAI, and Tan is an investing partner with blue chip venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Wells Fargo Bank provided a $5.4 million loan for the purchase.
Ten blocks east, sellers Herbert and Shwu-Ling Wei sold their six-bed, 5,000 square-foot home at 2881 Jackson Street for $10 million. Kyle Vineyard, a CPA with Realize Tax Advisors, is the trustee of the buyer, RKLA Trust. It is unclear whether Vineyard’s involvement is purely professional or if he’s connected to the trust.
The home last sold in 2014 for $6.8 million.
Presidio Heights, the neighborhood that runs along Presidio Park at San Francisco’s north end, has experienced a hot streak during the first half of 2026. Earlier this month, two mansions in the area sold for a combined $32 million, marking the fourth and fifth sales this year to eclipse $10 million. There were seven sales above that benchmark in Presidio Heights in all of 2025, according to Zillow data.
San Francisco, where the median home sale fetches $2.2 million, is dealing with its own version of champagne problems: a mansion shortage. The AI boom has attracted a wave of high-paid employees, apparently leaving the city with more millionaires than mansions. Steep capital gains taxes have made some mansion owners hesitant to let go of their property. Others are holding out for the expected spike in luxury home demand following Anthropic and OpenAI’s initial public offerings of stock, which are expected to come later this year.
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Staying safe at San Francisco’s Pride festivities
The SFPD has announced that officers from all districts, stations and specialized agencies will be positioned along the route for the Pride Parade to ensure the event is safe for attendees. The annual parade will be held this Sunday and is expected to attract hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.
San Francisco – San Francisco city and police officials said Wednesday that they want people to enjoy Pride festivities this weekend — including the popular parade on Sunday — and that they will be on the lookout for criminal activity.
“All of the leaders up here know how important this weekend is, and we are ready,” Mayor Daniel Lurie said while flanked by a host of officials at a news conference at San Francisco police headquarters.
Lurie said his message is simple: “Look out for one another. Report anything concerning and know that every first responder, city worker and volunteer has one goal: to help everyone celebrate safely.”
Hundreds of thousands expected at SF Pride Parade
What we know:
The annual Pride festivities and parade on Sunday are expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to San Francisco. Police say they’re working with state and federal partners to monitor any potential threats while making sure people enjoy themselves.
“You’ll see many of our officers – including me – wearing Pride patches,” said Police Chief Derrick Lew, gesturing to a multicolored patch on his shoulder. “As always, we’re excited to showcase San Francisco, and our longstanding status as a safe haven for members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
No tolerance for hate, DA says
What they’re saying:
District Attorney Brooke Jenkins says she and other city leaders will have no tolerance for hate.
Just last week, she charged a man with a hate crime for allegedly spray-painting a homophobic message outside a Castro District flower shop and punching a witness.
“There will be accountability if anything like that happens here, and so as much as we want to be joyous, we also have to take this occasion very seriously,” Jenkins said.
Suzanne Ford, executive director of SF Pride agreed, saying, “I think we all have the responsibility of demonstrating that we can work together to make sure that the LGBTQ community is centered for this weekend.”
Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said those who don’t behave will go straight to jail.
“The one mode of transportation we want to make sure all of you avoid this weekend is the party buses that the sheriff’s department will have out there,” Miyamoto said.
City officials are urging everyone to celebrate responsibly, don’t drink and drive or accept drinks from strangers and to report any suspicious activity.
Henry Lee is a KTVU crime reporter. E-mail Henry at Henry.Lee@fox.com and follow him on X @henrykleeKTVU and www.facebook.com/henrykleefan
The Source: KTVU reporting, San Francisco police and sheriff, district attorney’s office
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