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NFL offseason power rankings: No. 13 San Francisco 49ers try to forget a nightmare season

Published

4 months ago

July 14, 2025

NFL offseason power rankings: No. 13 San Francisco 49ers try to forget a nightmare season

Nobody knew it at the time, but 90 minutes before the San Francisco 49ers’ season began we got our first tip that everything was about to go wrong.

The 49ers, after a pretty clear manipulation of the injury report, declared Christian McCaffrey inactive for their Week 1 game. That surprised everyone, especially fantasy football managers waiting for their first-round pick to put up some points on Monday night. The 49ers said in the week leading up to the opener that McCaffrey’s Achilles injury wasn’t an issue. The reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year didn’t play until Nov. 10 due to that injury.

The 49ers won their first game against the Jets without McCaffrey. But it was the first sign that San Francisco was going to have one of those seasons.

[Get more San Francisco news: 49ers team feed]

The 49ers led in overtime of the Super Bowl months before last season started. They saw the title slip away when Patrick Mahomes led a game-winning drive for the Kansas City Chiefs. That stung, but most of the roster was set to return. The 49ers were in position to get right back to a Super Bowl. They put out the one big fire of the offseason, a Brandon Aiyuk trade tour, when they used the Pittsburgh Steelers to set the market and signed Aiyuk to a huge extension. Everything seemed fine. And McCaffrey’s injury wasn’t a big deal, right?

Sometimes when things go bad in the NFL, they go really bad. The 49ers had the most games lost due to injuries in the NFL by a mile and nearly every position group was affected. The 49ers had the second-most adjusted games lost to injury on offense and the third-most on defense. McCaffrey played in just four games. Aiyuk tore his ACL. Close losses piled up. In a moment that summed up a spiraling season, linebacker De’Vondre Campbell refused to go back into a game against the Rams and then just left the sideline. When the 49ers lost by 28 points to the Packers and 25 points to the Bills in back-to-back weeks, they were 5-7 and effectively finished. A team everyone ranked among the top few in the NFL going into the season went 6-11.

And if the bad vibes ended when the season did, that would have been fine. They didn’t. Deebo Samuel asked for a trade and was shipped to the Washington Commanders. The 49ers lost eight free agents who got at least $10 million per season elsewhere. Money talks in the NFL, which makes it easy to see San Francisco lost a lot of valuable players. Their three biggest free agent additions were all backups (tight end Luke Farrell, quarterback Mac Jones, receiver Demarcus Robinson) at low-cost contracts. The 49ers couldn’t spend much because they were keeping the decks clear for Brock Purdy’s five-year, $265 million extension, which was signed in May. Aiyuk’s recovery from his knee injury seems to be going a bit slow and he could start the season on the physically unable to perform list. Now Jauan Jennings, who’s grown into a valuable contributor at wide receiver, wants a new contract — or a trade. It was a horrible offseason for San Francisco.

And yet, the 49ers built such a deep, talented roster over the past few years that there’s hope for this season. McCaffrey should be back. Purdy is an efficient master of Kyle Shanahan’s offense. Other players like George Kittle, Trent Williams, Nick Bosa and Fred Warner are among the best in the NFL at their positions. Shanahan is one of the NFL’s best coaches, and he made a good hire to bring Robert Saleh back as defensive coordinator. BetMGM has the 49ers with one of the highest win totals in the NFL, at 10.5, and it’s justifiable. The 49ers had one of the unluckiest seasons possible, and that won’t repeat. There’s tremendous talent on hand.

It’s just a bit tougher now. Those stars are a year older. The roster took some hits. We can’t be sure if McCaffrey, at age 29, is further beyond his prime than we realize. Last year, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that San Francisco would be one of the best teams in the NFL. Going into this season, it’s hard to know what the 49ers will be.

Offseason grade

The 49ers lost nine players who other NFL teams believed were worth more than $10 million per season: receiver Deebo Samuel, guard Aaron Banks, cornerback Charvarius Ward, offensive tackle Jaylon Moore, safety Talanoa Hufanga, linebacker Dre Greenlaw, outside linebacker Leonard Floyd and defensive tackles Javon Hargrave and Maliek Collins. Samuel was traded to the Washington Commanders and the others were free agents. No matter how you want to explain the defections, that’s a lot to lose in one offseason. And San Francisco didn’t add a single impact free agent. The highest-paid free agent addition was tight end Luke Farrell (three years, $15.75 million) who fills a role as a blocking tight end and insurance in case George Kittle goes down, but it’s hard to get too excited. A low-cost trade for pass rusher Bryce Huff, the Eagles’ most expensive free agent addition last season (yes, he got more money than Saquon Barkley) after Huff didn’t fit in Philadelphia could pay off. The draft didn’t get good grades, but pass rusher Mykel Williams was a good value at No. 13 and defensive tackle Alfred Collins (second round) and linebacker Nick Martin (third round) should also help the front seven. When I graded each team’s moves, I ranked the 49ers’ offseason as the worst in the NFL.

Grade: D-

Quarterback report

Brock Purdy is now one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in NFL history. (Photo by Michael Owens/Getty Images)

(Michael Owens via Getty Images)

The debate about whether the 49ers should pay Brock Purdy is over. Not that the team seemed to ever entertain the idea of not paying him. Purdy signed a five-year, $265 million contract with $182.55 million guaranteed. It’s one of the great stories in sports, a former Mr. Irrelevant who now has the fifth-largest contract, in terms of total value, in NFL history.

The next question will be if the 49ers can build a roster around Purdy that can compete for championships. It’s understandable why San Francisco wasn’t going to let Purdy walk. He has been highly efficient running Kyle Shanahan’s scheme. Last season Purdy did post career lows in passer rating, completion percentage, adjusted yards per attempt, touchdown rate and sack rate while delivering a career-high interception rate, but that can be attributed to the attrition around him. However, with Purdy taking up a lot of the salary cap going forward, he’ll have to get used to not being surrounded by a stellar supporting cast.

BetMGM odds breakdown

From Yahoo’s Ben Fawkes: “The era of Brock Purdy being the best QB contract value in the league is over, as Purdy signed his long-awaited extension this offseason. Is the Super Bowl window closing for the 49ers? Deebo Samuel, Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga are gone, but San Francisco has easiest schedule of any team by opposing win total — which helps explain a seemingly high win total of 10.5 at BetMGM. The 49ers are favored in a staggering 15 games this season and in the two games they’re underdogs, it’s only by 1.5 points each. The 49ers are +160 favorites in the NFC West (ahead of the Rams at +185) and -180 favorites to make the postseason. But can they get back to the Super Bowl? They’re 20-to-1 to win it all, tied for the seventh shortest odds.”

Yahoo’s fantasy take

From Yahoo’s Scott Pianowski: “The market doesn’t know what to do with Christian McCaffrey this year, and I understand. He’s currently the RB6 in Yahoo ADP, typically going in that 10-13 range overall. McCaffrey has missed more than half the season in three of his past five years, but in his last four healthy seasons, he’s been the RB3, RB1, RB2 and RB1 in basic fantasy scoring. It’s ironic that McCaffrey played just four games last year while most of the other signature backs in the league were shockingly healthy. Bottom line, McCaffrey is the biggest boom-or-bust pick in the league. Do you feel lucky?”

Stat to remember

In the 49ers’ final two games last season, Ricky Pearsall and Jauan Jennings were laying the groundwork for the 2025 season. They combined for 28 catches, 329 yards and two touchdowns in those final two games. Each of them caught at least six balls in each game. That could be a preview of what’s to come.

Brandon Aiyuk is coming off a major knee injury. When he’ll return and how good he’ll be when he does get back is a mystery. Deebo Samuel is gone. George Kittle is one of the NFL’s best tight ends and if Christian McCaffrey is healthy he’ll get plenty of touches, but the 49ers offense also has to feature Pearsall and Jennings more, especially early in the season. Pearsall was a 2024 first-round pick whose rookie season got off to a slow start after he was shot in the chest during an attempted robbery. He looked good late. Jennings has generally played well when given the opportunity, and last season he had 975 yards and six touchdowns despite starting just 10 games. He complicated matters some this month by asking for a new contract or trade, so the 49ers have to sort that out. Because together, Pearsall and Jennings should be able to produce early in the season, and if Aiyuk rebounds to his pre-2024 form the 49ers might have one of the best receiver groups in the NFL.

Burning question

Can Robert Saleh boost the 49ers defense?

When Robert Saleh got the New York Jets head coaching job, it was mostly because his defenses in San Francisco were outstanding. The 49ers had a top seven defense in DVOA in Saleh’s final two seasons in San Francisco, and while he didn’t succeed running the Jets, his defenses were among the NFL’s best after a tough first year. Saleh might do well in his second head coaching job — he’s far from the first coach to not overcome a ridiculously bad Jets situation — but he didn’t land a top job this past offseason. It made sense for Saleh and the 49ers, who fired defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen after one season in that role, to reunite for his second stint running the team’s defense.

The 49ers are undergoing a makeover on that side of the ball. They are projected to have four new starters on defense, and it could be five if rookie Nick Martin beats out Dee Winters at inside linebacker. Saleh is one of the best defensive coaches in the NFL and he’s a great fit to guide San Francisco through its transition, even if it’s just for the short term before he gets another shot to be a head coach.

Best case scenario

A Kyle Shanahan offense with Brock Purdy distributing the ball to Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, Jauan Jennings (if his contract situation is resolved), Ricky Pearsall and (eventually) Brandon Aiyuk should be very good. The defense will look different but has All-Pro talent with Nick Bosa and Fred Warner, and Robert Saleh is a proven defensive coach. Seeing the betting market have the 49ers among the top win totals and best Super Bowl odds might be startling after they went 6-11 and had a rough offseason. But bad luck factors like injuries and a 2-6 record in one-score games that sank the 49ers last season won’t repeat and the top-end talent on the roster is undeniable. Also, the 49ers go from the second-toughest schedule in the NFL last season (via DVOA) to one that is projected to be by far the easiest (via Sharp Football Analysis, which uses betting win totals to determine strength of schedule). If everything that went wrong last season does a 180 and goes right this season, the 49ers could win the Super Bowl. That remains their upside.

Nightmare scenario

The 49ers’ roster is more top-heavy after many solid players left this offseason. Trent Williams will be 37 this season, George Kittle will turn 32 in October and Christian McCaffrey is 29, which isn’t young for a running back. If those three Hall of Fame talents slip at once, the offense will suffer, especially if Brandon Aiyuk doesn’t bounce back strong from a torn ACL or the 49ers don’t sort out the Jauan Jennings contract. Some projections believe the 49ers could have a bottom-10 defense, after it struggled badly down the stretch and lost talent in the offseason. Great NFL teams have an expiration date. Championship windows don’t stay open forever. The 49ers can blame injuries for last season’s collapse, but it’s also possible we saw the first signs of a very strong roster falling to the middle of the pack. If the 49ers miss the playoffs again, the next step will be figuring out whether their core is capable of a rebound or if it’s time to blow it up. It would really hurt to say goodbye to this group without it ever winning a Super Bowl.

The crystal ball says

The 49ers were one of the toughest teams in this countdown to figure out. A Super Bowl championship is in their range of outcomes. We also saw a significant downturn last season, and they had the worst offseason of any NFL team. Star players like Christian McCaffrey, Brandon Aiyuk, Trent Williams and others become harder to project due to injuries or age. The 49ers will rebound from last season’s nightmare, but not all the way to being one of the NFL’s elite teams. There are too many variables to predict that to happen. They will be an NFC West contender, and that race against the Rams could come down to the final week of the season. Which side of the division race the 49ers fall on could go a long way in determining their future course.

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Alice Wong, San Francisco disability justice activist and writer, dies at 51

Published

11 hours ago

November 16, 2025

Press Room

Alice Wong, San Francisco disability justice activist and writer, dies at 51

Alice Wong drinks out of a paper cup at a cafe in San Francisco in 2019. Wong opposed the elimination of single use cups, noting that ceramic mugs were heavy and could be difficult for some people to hold.

Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle

Alice Wong, a visionary disability justice advocate whose writing helped people understand what it was like to live with a disability, died of an infection Friday at a San Francisco hospital. She was 51.

“I did not ever imagine I would live to this age and end up a writer, editor, activist and more,” Wong wrote in a posthumous message on social media. “We need more stories about us and our culture. You all, we all, deserve the everything and more in such a hostile, ableist environment.”

Wong was born with muscular dystrophy. She used a powered wheelchair and a breathing device and said doctors had not expected her to live past 18.

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Her early experiences navigating medical and social barriers shaped her life’s work — turning personal struggle into a public campaign for equity, visibility and change.

Rooted in San Francisco’s vibrant disability justice movement, Wong pushed to reshape how the Bay Area — and the nation — understood equity, spotlighting barriers to access in the city’s universities and restaurants.

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When Bay Area coffee shops moved to ban paper cups, Wong told the Chronicle how the decision would burden those in the disabled community with limited mobility or decreased sensation in their hands. For them, glass and ceramic mugs were often too heavy and slippery.

Alice Wong drinks out of a paper cup at a cafe in San Francisco in November 2019. Wong wrote of the hardships faced by people with disabilities as they navigated everyday life — and campaigned for change.

Scott Strazzante/S.F. Chronicle

Wong also worked to establish accessible resources for disabled students at UCSF, where she earned a master’s degree in medical sociology in 2004 and later worked as a staff researcher for more than a decade.

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She had moved to San Francisco in 1997 to attend the university, which at the time, she said, didn’t have any accessible places for her to live. The university built her a one-room unit in the garage of a professor’s house, Wong said in her memoir, “Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life.” She worked with UCSF’s Office of Student Life to change access for disabled students.

Wong said she struggled at university and pushed off work for her classes. Around 2001, she stopped being a student before returning to finish her degree. Years later, Wong said one of her professors apologized, saying he was sorry the department hadn’t done more to support her.

“Disabled people have resisted for millennia efforts to eliminate us and erase our culture,” Wong said in 2024 during an alternative communication research summit. “Doctors told my parents I wouldn’t live past 18, so I grew up never imagining what grownup old ass Alice would look like, and this is why visibility, being able to tell our stories and controlling our own narratives, is why I do what I do.”

Disability rights activist Alice Wong, shown at Rutherford Hill Winery in Napa County, has died at age 51.
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Courtesy of Grace Wong

The founder of the Disability Visibility Project, which collects oral histories of Americans with disabilities in conjunction with StoryCorps, Wong has been at the forefront of chronicling how COVID and its unparalleled disruption of lives and institutions have underscored challenges that disabled people have always had to live with.

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Though Wong often jokingly described herself as an “angry disabled Asian girl,” she brought sharp humor and insight to her activism. In “Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century,” she edited authors exploring inequities within the disabled community and how society values certain bodies over others.

“There is a cyborg hierarchy,” disability activist Jillian Weise wrote. “They like us best with bionic arms and legs. They like us Deaf with hearing aids, though they prefer cochlear implants. It would be an affront to ask the Hearing to learn sign language. Instead they wish for us to lose our language, abandon our culture, and consider ourselves cured.”

Wong wrote about her own experience transforming into what she calls a cyborg in an article for Literary Hub.

“Doctors advised me to get spinal fusion surgery when I was around twelve, but I was too freaked out by the thought of it because it was a serious-ass procedure,” Wong wrote. “By eighth grade my parents told me I was near the final window for this surgery, which could improve my breathing and alleviate the deep fatigue I experienced every day. I relented — with no idea how it would turn me into a cyborg inside out.”

Wong’s achievements brought national recognition. In 2013, then-President Barack Obama selected her for a two-year seat on the National Council on Disability, which advised Congress and the president. In 2024, she received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation genius grant.

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It was also the year, after decades of sharing a home with her parents, she moved into her own apartment in San Francisco with her cats, Bert and Ernie, according to the New York Times.

Wong is survived by her father, Henry, and her mother, Bobby, both immigrants from Hong Kong, as well as her sisters, Emily and Grace Wong.

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San Francisco’s system of governance is a mess. There’s a fix — but it will take a village

Published

1 day ago

November 15, 2025

Press Room

San Francisco’s system of governance is a mess. There’s a fix — but it will take a village

Streamlining San Francisco’s City Charter, empowering the mayor and raising the threshold for placing measures on the ballot will help the city function better.

Jessica Christian/S.F. Chronicle

For many of us, focusing on a task is difficult when we’re working in a chaotic, disorganized space. Cluttered room, cluttered mind as they say.

The same is true for the government. When you have rules and laws that are messy and conflicting, solutions to intractable problems can easily become obscured by towering piles of bureaucracy.

Here in San Francisco, our rule books are a hoarder’s house of clutter.

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San Francisco’s charter is akin to a constitution — it outlines central rules and principles for governing our joint city and county. But over decades, this document has become filled with so much legal ephemera that it now spans 548 pages — the longest of any city in the country.

By way of comparison, Seattle’s charter is only 23 pages.

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Unsurprisingly, this has led to less-than-ideal outcomes.

Among them: A literally uncountable number of commissions, including commissions that oversee departments that no longer exist, a lack of clarity over who’s responsible for what and unnecessarily complex and opaque processes that breed corruption.

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This mess is largely San Francisco’s own creation, which means the city needs to do the vast majority of the work to clean it up. The law dictates there’s no way to fix these bloated rules without a ballot initiative.

That effort is already underway.

Voters passed Proposition E last November, which ironically created a new commission to evaluate existing commissions and recommend which could be combined or shuttered. The Prop E committee is scheduled to release its recommendations to Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Board of Supervisors in February. Prop E also requires these recommendations to be placed in a draft charter amendment that will go through the typical legislative process at the Board of Supervisors before being sent to voters in a likely November 2026 ballot measure.

But commission reform is only one necessary component of overhauling San Francisco’s charter. Larger changes are needed — and they form the heart of a report released Monday by the urban think tank SPUR.

The report, dubbed “Charter for Change,” makes 10 key recommendations that SPUR argues should also be incorporated into the November 2026 ballot measure.

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Many of the recommendations reinforce those SPUR made in a similar report last year that focused on improving San Francisco’s governance. For example, the group argues the mayor should be given the authority to hire and fire most department heads.

Some will no doubt cry foul over the idea of expanding executive power — especially after the fiasco this week with the resignation of Mayor Lurie’s pick to fill the open District 4 seat left by the recall of Joel Engardio. But this is nevertheless a common-sense suggestion.

San Franciscans largely hold the mayor responsible for the state of the city. Under the charter, however, the mayor has unilateral authority to appoint just four of the more than 50 department heads and lacks explicit authority to fire some of them.

Citizens have limited ability to hold their government accountable when power is spread out over diffuse boards and nominating commissions. But when the mayor controls departments, you know who to vote out when things aren’t getting done.

SPUR also suggests empowering the city administrator by turning the position into a chief operating officer focused on essential city operations, long-term projects and reforming San Francisco’s byzantine purchasing rules.

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None of these changes will mean much, however, if we continue to expand our monstrous rule books with ultra-long, complex ballots that give voters the chance to add even more clutter.

Right now, it’s too easy to place measures before voters. Non-charter amendments can be put on the ballot unilaterally by the mayor, with only 4 of 11 Board of Supervisors votes and by any group that collects signatures from 2% of registered voters.

These low thresholds invite political posturing and disincentivize thoughtful policymaking. In 2022, for example, then-Mayor London Breed and progressive supervisors placed two competing housing measures on the ballot instead of finding a legislative compromise. Unsurprisingly, confused voters rejected both measures. And last year, Prop E was — ironically — one of two competing commission-streamlining measures on the ballot; voters rejected the alternative, Prop D.

SPUR recommends raising the threshold for non-charter amendment ballot measures: The Board of Supervisors would need a majority vote, the mayor would need board approval and groups would need to gather signatures from 5% of registered voters, a percentage in line with other charter cities.

What about proposals that would amend the charter?

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To keep San Francisco’s charter from getting even more clogged, SPUR proposes raising the threshold for putting charter amendments on the ballot. Right now, it can be done by a majority vote on the Board of Supervisors or by groups that gather signatures from 10% of registered voters.

SPUR wants to see the signature-gathering requirement pushed to 15%, and it also wants to empower the mayor to veto a charter amendment proposed by a board majority — although the board could then override that veto with its own supermajority vote.

These changes, however, would require a tweak to state law. We’re hopeful that one of San Francisco’s state lawmakers will take up the cause in Sacramento.

Far from diluting voters’ power, the tweak would bring San Francisco in line with other charter cities in California — while also accounting for our unique status as the only joint city and county in the state.

Other large charter cities and major economic centers in California — such as Los Angeles, San Jose and San Diego — require groups to gather signatures from 15% of registered voters to place charter amendments on the ballot.

But San Francisco is also the only California city and county governed simultaneously by a mayor. Given this distinctive setup — and the unique responsibility it confers on the mayor — it makes sense for the mayor to play a role in shaping charter amendments.

The state should do its small part to help San Francisco improve its governance. That said, California cannot save San Francisco from itself. If we want to clean up our system of governance, we’ll have to do it ourselves.

Some version of charter reform will be on the ballot next year.

The editorial positions of The Chronicle, including election recommendations, represent the consensus of the editorial board, consisting of the publisher, the editorial page editor and staff members of the opinion pages. Its judgments are made independent of the news operation, which covers the news without consideration of our editorial positions.

Can our leaders set infighting aside and craft a comprehensive measure to meaningfully improve our charter? And, if so, will residents be willing to relinquish some of their power of direct democracy so that the city can function as smoothly as they insist they want it to?

The California Legislature can’t answer that question. Only San Francisco can.

Reach the editorial board with a letter to the editor:www.sfchronicle.com/submit-your-opinion.

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San Francisco murder case solved after 47 years

Published

2 days ago

November 14, 2025

Press Room

San Francisco murder case solved after 47 years

A nearly 50-year-old San Francisco cold case has come to a close after a Colorado man was found guilty this week of killing a teenager visiting San Francisco back in 1978, according to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office.

Fifteen-year-old Marissa Harvey was visiting her sister when she went missing on March 27, 1978, after saying she was going to Golden Gate Park. A day later, Harvey’s body was found at Sutro Heights Park, with signs she had been sexually assaulted.

Harvey was found to have died of strangulation.

The San Francisco Police Department’s homicide division responded to the scene, but the case went cold for decades, with no suspect identified. In 2000, new technology allowed law enforcement to pull DNA from Harvey’s clothing and some used chewing gum found on her back.

It took 21 more years before SFPD’s cold case division was able to use that DNA to identify a suspect via investigative genealogy and homed in on Mark Personette.

In a joint operation with the FBI, law enforcement surveilled Personette in Denver, where he lived, and watched as he discarded trash about 15 miles from his home. They then used that trash to obtain his DNA and found it was a match for the DNA found on Harvey’s clothing and the gum at the scene.

While Personette claimed he had not been in San Francisco at the time, law enforcement also found 1970s maps of the city and a set of California license plates with a 1979 registration sticker. During the trial, another woman testified that Personette had sexually assaulted her a year and a half after Harvey’s murder.

“At long last, justice has been delivered, and Mr. Personette is being held accountable for this horrific crime,” District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a statement. “I would like to thank the survivor and the victim’s family for never losing hope and remaining steadfast in their commitment to seeing justice done.”

After being found guilty of murder, Personette, now 80, faces seven years to life in prison. He is expected to be sentenced on Dec. 15.

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