San Francisco, CA

Listing every retired number in San Francisco 49ers franchise history

Published

1 year ago

July 15, 2024

Listing every retired number in San Francisco 49ers franchise history

The San Francisco 49ers have one of the most storied franchises in NFL history. With numerous Hall of Fame players and several all-time greats, it makes sense that they have had many jersey numbers retired.

This article will look at every jersey number that has been retired in franchise history. There are many players we all know of because they are franchise legends who delivered Super Bowls to San Francisco and brought the franchise to prominence.

Then there are some that many fans may not know about.

A franchise and its fans need to care about a team’s history. There is a reason that the 49ers educate their incoming rookies on the franchise’s history every year. It helps players understand they are connected to some of the greatest players in NFL history simply by dint of the jersey they wear. It also provides a reminder that there is a standard of excellence and an expectation of championships among the fanbase.

While the Niners have not won a Super Bowl in 30 years, they have still had incredible players who will surely one day add their number to the list of retired numbers.

But for now, let us take a trip down memory lane and look at the 12 retired numbers in 49ers history.

1. RB Joe Perry #34

Running back Joe Perry is one of two running backs who has had his number retired by the 49ers. Perry was the first Black player on the 49ers. He was a phenomenal player, rushing for over 1,000 yards in both the 1953 and 1954 seasons.

That was back when the season was 12 games, making it even more impressive.

Many fans remember Roger Craig and Frank Gore as great running backs in the franchise, and rightfully so. But fans would do well to remember the great contributions and historic nature of Perry’s career.

2. RB Hugh McElheny #39

Another legendary running back in franchise history is Hugh McElheny who played at the same time as Perry. That is a pretty formidable backfield. Both he and Perry, along with quarterback Y.A. Tittle and fullback John Henry Johnson, were dubbed the “Million Dollar Backfield.”

Perhaps the 49ers can update that moniker with their current backfield of Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, and Kyle Juszczyk as the “Multi-Million Dollar Backfield.”

McElheny was undoubtedly a 49ers legend and should be remembered as such.

Now let’s turn to some defensive legends.

3. CB Jimmy Johnson #37

Legendary cornerback Jimmy Johnson passed away earlier in 2024. His legacy lives on as the best cornerback in 49ers history. He played his entire career in San Francisco and recorded an impressive 47 interceptions in his career, which is second only to Ronnie Lott in franchise history.

Johnson played from 1961 through 1976, so he left just before the team’s championship years began. But that does not make his career less meaningful or impressive, which is why he is a 49ers legend.

4. DT Charlie Krueger #70

Like Johnson, Charlie Krueger spent his entire career with the Niners. He was with the franchise from 1958 through 1973.

His nickname was the “Textbook Tackle” for his impeccable technique and strength. In a franchise that has had a lot of great defensive linemen, Krueger will always have the distinction of being one of the best in franchise history.

Now let’s take a look at a quarterback whose number is retired, although it may not be who you think.

5. QB John Brodie #12

If Tom Brady had ever wound up on the 49ers, he would not have been able to wear his patented #12, thanks to John Brodie. Brodie played for the Niners from 1957 through 1973 and is still second on the team’s franchise passing leaders with 31,548 passing yards.

His 214-224 touchdown-to-interception ratio does not look great by modern standards, but the passing game was more limited in Brodie’s day as the run game was predominant.

Despite that, Brodie still racked up a lot of yardage throughout his career and was a great quarterback for the team.

6. DT Leo Nomellini #73

Leo Nomellini turned in 14 solid seasons with the 49ers from 1950 through 1963. He had 13.5 career sacks as a defensive lineman, although sacks were not recorded as a stat until later in his career. He went to 10 Pro Bowls, showing that he was one of the better defensive linemen of his day, which is why his number is forever etched in franchise history.

7. T Bob St. Clair #79

Offensive tackle Bob St. Clair was born in San Francisco and spent his entire career with the 49ers. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990 and was a five-time Pro Bowler. Many 49ers legends do not have roots in the Bay Area, so it is cool that St. Clair was a San Francisco native and got to play his entire career for his hometown team.

Now let’s turn to a pair of wide receivers.

8. WR Dwight Clark #87

Dwight Clark will always have a place in 49ers history as well as the history of the NFL and American sports at large thanks to his incredible play forever dubbed “The Catch,” in the 1981 NFC Championship game against the Dallas Cowboys.

Clark’s career was shortened by injury, but he still had over 6,000 receiving yards in his career as well as 48 receiving touchdowns. Although Clark sadly passed away in 2018 due to ALS, his legend will forever live on in the hearts of 49ers fans.

9. WR Jerry Rice #80

The greatest wide receiver of all time is Jerry Rice, and one could make a pretty strong case that he is the best player in NFL history. With a truly unfathomable 22,895 receiving yards in his career and 197 touchdowns across 20 seasons, he achieved a level of excellence previously unseen at wide receiver.

He established a great partnership with quarterbacks Joe Montana and eventually Steve Young. Head coach Bill Walsh had to trade up to get him, and Rice did not impress right away as he had an early reputation for dropping passes.

But it did not take him too long to establish himself as a great receiver and he was a huge part of the 1988, 1989, and 1994 championship seasons.

He has remained involved with the 49ers and can be seen regularly at the team’s games. 49ers fans will always be thankful for his excellence in a Niners uniform which is why no one will wear the No. 80 ever again in the team’s history.

10. S Ronnie Lott #42

It is no coincidence that the 49ers dynasty began in 1981, the first season that defensive back Ronnie Lott played as a pro. For a team that needed help in its secondary, he immediately bolstered the defense and turned it into a force.

He has the most interceptions in franchise history with 51 and would have had even more if the 49ers had not traded him. He gave the “finesse” 49ers a hard hitting bruiser on defense who inspired fear in the hearts of opponents. He was one of the hardest-hitting safeties of all time and his toughness was personified by the fact that he had a pinky ginfer partially amputated so he could keep playing in a season.

He is without question one of the best 49ers in history.

11. QB Steve Young #8

At one point the most divisive figure in Bay Area sports, the fact that Young eventually brought home a Super Bowl for the 49ers and the benefit of time has made him one of the most beloved sports figures in the Bay.

He had to live in Montana’s shadow for a long time, but Young eventually was able to get the monkey off his back by winning the 1994 Super Bowl and winning the Super Bowl MVP for his six touchdown passes in a rout of the San Diego Chargers.

Young’s greatness will never be forgotten, but he will always be at least partially in the shadow of #16.

12. QB Joe Montana #16

Perhaps no name is as synonymous with the 49ers as Montana.

He led the Niners to four Super Bowl championships in his career and was one of the most clutch quarterbacks to ever play the game.

There are so many moments that stand out in his 49ers career. “The Catch,” of course. The touchdown pass to John Taylor in the second Super Bowl against the Bengals, the epic comeback against the Eagles, that pass down the sideline to Rice against the Giants.

One could list all of his accomplishments and stats, but they will never capture that feeling that he was the guy back then and that the Niners never felt like they were out of a game when he was behind center. He is the best quarterback in franchise history without question.

Now, let’s take a look at some numbers that may end up being retired by the 49ers.

LB Patrick Willis #52

One of the best linebackers of his generation, Patrick Willis may very well have his number retired. He was just elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and his greatness as a 49er cannot be disputed.

Even though his career was cut short due to injury, while he was on the field he was a ferocious competitior and was the beating heart of the defense on those Harbaugh teams that made three straight deep runs in the postseason.

It is just a matter of time before his number is retired.

RB Frank Gore #21

Probably the greatest running back in franchise history, Gore should be in the Hall of Fame eventually. He was a solid workhorse for years with San Francisco, and all five of his Pro Bowls came as a member of the Niners.

Like Willis, he was a key part of those good years under head coach Jim Harbaugh and there will be many a fan, including Harbaugh himself, who will regret the fact that the Niners did not run the ball with Gore down near the goal line at the end of the Super Bowl against the Baltimore Ravens.

Alas, Gore is still a fantastic 49er, and his number should be retired someday.

DL Nick Bosa #97

It is still very early in his career, but Nick Bosa is already making a pretty strong case to have his number retired someday. He is one of the most feared defensive rushers in the game today, and it is no coincidence that the recent string of 49ers successes occurred in 2019, his first season with the team.

He will have to continue this success for the rest of his 49ers career and it certainly would not hurt if he helped bring home the sixth Super Bowl championship in franchise history.

Careers are anything but linear, but if he can stay healthy and keep playing at this same level for the next five years, then he may be the last 49er to ever wear 97.

So, there you have it. All 12 numbers that have been retired in team history and a few players who could join that illustrious list. The 49ers franchise has a rich and storied history and taking a look at all of these retired numbers certainly affirms that.

San Francisco, CA

San Francisco celebrates drop in traffic deaths

Published

3 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

San Francisco celebrates drop in traffic deaths

San Francisco says traffic deaths plunged 42% last year.

While the city celebrates the numbers, leaders say there’s still a lot more work to do.

“We are so glad to see fewer of these tragedies on our streets last year, and I hope this is a turning point for this city,” said Marta Lindsey with Walk San Francisco.

Marta is cautiously optimistic as the city looks to build on its street safety efforts.

“The city has been doing more of the things we need on our streets, whether its speed cameras or daylighting or speed humps,” she said.

Viktorya Wise with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency said there are many things the agency has been doing to ensure street safety is the focus, including adding speed cameras at 33 locations, and it’s paying off.

“Besides the visible speed cameras, we’re doing a lot of basic bread and butter work on our streets,” Wise said. “For example, we’re really data driven and focused on the high injury network.”

Late last year, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced the city’s street safety initiative.

“Bringing together all of the departments, all of the city family to collectively tackle the problem of street safety,” Wise said. “And all of us working together into the future, I’m very hopeful that we will continue this trend.”

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San Francisco, CA

Year 1 of the Lurie era is done. Here’s how he kept — or whiffed — his biggest promises

Published

15 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Year 1 of the Lurie era is done. Here’s how he kept — or whiffed — his biggest promises

On Jan. 8 of last year, San Francisco tried on its new mayor like a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans.

So far, it has liked the fit.

For 365 days, Mayor Daniel Lurie has taken swings at solving the city’s ills: scrambling to scrap the fentanyl scourge, working to house the homeless, and shaking his proverbial pompoms with enough vigor to cheerlead downtown back to life.

So is San Francisco all fixed now?

The eye test tells one story. The data tell another. But politics is more than paper gains and policy battles. It’s also a popularity contest — and Lurie has categorically been winning his, riding high on a stratospheric 71% approval rating.

Lurie’s rainbow-filled Instagram posts have gone a long way toward soothing locals’ doom-loop fears, but the political fortress he’s built over the past year could easily crumble.

After all, his predecessors as mayor, London Breed and the late Ed Lee, each enjoyed positive approval ratings (opens in new tab) in their first year in office. But the honeymoons lasted only about that long before voters gradually soured on their performance. Should San Franciscans’ adulation for Lurie similarly ebb, his policies might meet more resistance.

Still, if there’s one pattern with Lurie’s efforts in his freshman year, it’s this: While he hasn’t achieved all of his lofty goals, he has fundamentally changed how the city approaches many of its problems, potentially setting up success for future years.

As we enter Lurie: Year 2, here’s a rundown of where the mayor has delivered on his campaign promises, where he’s been stymied, and why voters may continue to give him the benefit of the doubt. At least, for now.

Misery on the streets

Jason Henry for The Standard

Headwinds: While Candidate Lurie promised to declare a fentanyl “state of emergency” on his first day in office, he quickly found it wasn’t legal to do so. (Per the city’s administrative codes, an emergency needs to be sudden and unforeseen; the fentanyl epidemic was neither.) Instead, the mayor asked the Board of Supervisors to grant him similar powers that an emergency declaration would have afforded him, and they agreed. But as Lurie touted his efforts to curb drug use on Sixth Street, all those drug dealers just moseyed on down to the Mission. The mayor’s first year in office ended with 588 drug overdose deaths, according to the office of the medical examiner (opens in new tab). That’s an improvement from the 635 in 2024, but it’s still an appalling body count — and December 2025 isn’t even part of the official tally yet.

Silver linings: The mayor employed his newfound powers to speed up approvals of initiatives, notching well-publicized wins, like fast-tracking the 822 Geary stabilization center, where police can place mentally ill folks instead of arresting them. It’s got a 25% better success rate at connecting patients to treatment than previous facilities, according to city data, part of a noted change for the better in the Tenderloin. And while some of the police’s high-profile drug busts didn’t net, you know, actual drug dealers, law-and-order-hungry San Franciscans were just happy to see batons fly.

Shelter-bed shuffle

Source: Manuel Orbegozo for The Standard

Headwinds: On the campaign trail, Lurie talked a big game about his nonprofit experience, which he claimed had allowed him to cinch deals to create shelter that seasoned politicians had been too slow to enact. He even promised 1,500 treatment and recovery beds built for homeless folks in just six months. By midyear, he had backed off that promise. The real number of beds Lurie created in 2025 is about 500, and that’s after 12 months — twice the amount of time he gave himself.

Silver linings: Housed San Franciscans gauge success on homelessness with their eyeballs, not bureaucrats’ spreadsheets. By that measure, Lurie is succeeding. As of December, the city counted (opens in new tab) just 162 tents and similar structures, almost half as many as the previous year. (And as a stark counter to what some would call an achievement, for people on the streets, that can mean danger — without a thin layer of nylon to hide in, homeless women say they are experiencing more sexual assaults.) And drug markets haven’t vanished; they just moved to later hours. But are folks really getting help? Rudy Bakta, a man living on San Francisco’s streets, would tell you no, as he’s stuck in systemic limbo seeking a home. He’s just one of thousands.

Reviving the economy

Headwinds: Lurie asked for (opens in new tab) “18 to 24 months” to see downtown booming again, so we shouldn’t ding him for Market Street’s continued slow recovery. Foot traffic downtown has generally risen, reaching 80% of pre-pandemic levels by midyear, but slumped to roughly 70% as of November. While it doesn’t sound like much, that’s a reversal of the rising trend the city controller had projected. Office attendance is also slipping. It had risen past 45% of pre-pandemic occupancy in January 2025 but by the fall had slid below 40%.

Other economic indicators are wobbly too. Hotel occupancy “lost steam” in November, the controller wrote, nearing pre-pandemic levels in the summer but dipping below 2019 levels in the fall. The poster child for downtown’s troubles is undoubtedly the San Francisco Centre, the cavernous, and soon tenantless, shell of its former self. And while public employee unions are undoubtedly happy that promised layoffs were avoided, Lurie’s light hand in his first-ever budget pushed some even harder decisions to 2026’s budget season.

Silver linings: There’s a brighter story to tell outside the Financial District: Neighborhoods are where the action is nowadays. Just ask anyone dining at one of Stonestown Galleria’s 27 restaurants. This is where Lurie’s Instagram account (opens in new tab) truly has generated its own reality, crafting an image of a retail and restaurant renaissance. While that neighborhood vibrancy may lead some to shrug their shoulders concerning downtown’s continuing malaise, it’s worth noting that San Francisco’s coffers depend on taxes generated by the businesses nestled in those skyscrapers. There’s a reason we had a nearly $800 million budget deficit last year.

Fully staffing the SFPD

Headwinds: At first glance, Lurie appears on track to meet his campaign promise to staff up the city’s police force. “I’ve talked with current command staff and former command staff. We can recruit 425 officers in my first three years. We will get that done,” he said at a 2024 League of Women Voters forum. True to his word, the SFPD hired and rehired roughly 144 officers last year. There’s just one problem: The department recalculated the number of officers it needs in order to be fully staffed, raising the number to 691. And the police academy, which already struggled with graduating officers, might be hampered in the aftermath of a cadet’s death, after which top brass reassigned the academy’s leadership.

Silver linings: Crime is trending down, and that’s what voters care about, full stop. The reduction is part of a national trend (opens in new tab), yes, but San Francisco’s rates are experiencing an exceptional drop. Really, Lurie really should be sending Breed a thank-you card. Her March 2024 ballot measure Proposition E (opens in new tab) gave the SFPD carte blanche to unleash a bevy of technological tools to enable arrests, including drones and license plate readers, which have seen noted success. “Soon as you slide past that motherf—er with stolen plates, they’re gonna issue a warning to every SFPD station in that area, if not the entire city … and they start dispatching to that area,” rapper Dreamlife Rizzy said in a recent podcast, as reported by the New York Post (opens in new tab). That is music to any crime-fighting mayor’s ears.

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San Francisco, CA

Downtown San Francisco Immigration Court Set to Close In a Year

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Downtown San Francisco Immigration Court Set to Close In a Year

The federal immigration court in downtown San Francisco that started 2025 with 21 judges and will soon be down to just four, thanks to Trump administration mass-firings, will close by January 2027.

News arrived Wednesday that federal officials are planning to shut down the immigration court at 100 Montgomery Street in San Francisco by the end of the year, and transfer all or most immigration court activity to the court in Concord. Mission Local reported the news via a source close to the situation, and KTVU subsequently confirmed the move.

Jeremiah Johnson, one of the SF judges who was fired this past year, serves as vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, and confirmed the news to KTVU.

The Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration court operations, has yet to comment.

As Mission Local reports, a smaller set of courtrooms at the other SF immigration facility and ICE headquarters at 630 Sansome Street will remain open for business.

The Concord immigration court saw five judge fired last year, though two had not yet begun hearing any cases. Seven judges remain at that court, and four remaining judges based at 100 Montgomery are expected to be transferred there by this summer.

Mission Local previously reported that out of 21 judges serving at the courthouse last spring, 13 have been fired in recent months, and four others are scheduled for retirement by the end of this month.

This is happening as the court has a backlog of some 120,000 pending cases.

As Politico reported last month, the Trump administration has fired around 98 immigration judges out of the 700 who had been serving as of early last year.

Olivia Cassin, a fired judge based in New York, said this was by design, and, “It’s about destroying a system where cases are carefully considered by people with knowledge of the subject matter.”

This is all perfectly legal, as Politico explained, because immigration judges serve in administrative courts as at-will employees, under the purview of the Department of Justice — and do not have the same protections as the federal judiciary bench.

A spokesperson for the DOJ has said that the department is “restoring integrity to our immigration system and encourages talented legal professionals to join in our mission to protect national security and public safety,” following “four years of the Biden Administration forcing Immigration Courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands of aliens.”

Johnson also spoke to Politico suggesting that this recruitment language by the DOJ is disingenuous, and that the real intention is just to cripple the entire court system and prevent most legal immigration cases from being heard.

“During Trump One, when I was appointed, there was a policy that got some pushback called ‘No Dark Courtrooms.’ We were to hear cases every day, use all the [available] space,” Johnson said, speaking to Politico. “Now, there’s vacant courtrooms that are not being utilized. And any attempts by the administration saying they’re replacing judges — the math just doesn’t work if you look at the numbers.”

Two Democrats in the House, Reps. Dan Goldman of New York and Zoe Lofgren of California, have recently introduced legislation that would move immigration courts out of the Executive branch, but that seems likely to go nowhere until Democrats regain control in Congress.

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