Santa Clara Diet: A San Francisco 49ers Preview

[Author’s Note: In support of DFO’s efforts to maintain its position at the bleeding edge of Blog Innovation, I have chosen to conduct this preview as a Pre-Post-Modern Impressionist visual meditation on man’s inhumanity to man. Please tune in tomorrow for the Bills preview, which will be in the form of interpretive dance.]

Your 2019 San Francisco 49ers:

Your 2019 San Francisco 49ers After Jimmy Garoppolo’s Inevitable Week 1 Injury:

What’s Good:

What Isn’t:

Great Movies You Could Watch In Their Entirety During The Time It Would Take To Get From Downtown San Francisco to a “Home” Game in Santa Clara:

What I Imagine George Kittle, Record-Holder For Most Single-Season Receiving Yards By A Tight End, Looks Like:

What George Kittle, Record-Holder For Most Single-Season Receiving Yards By A Tight End, Actually Looks Like:

Other Famous Georges:

Likely Outcome of the Season:

Prediction: 6-10

Ok, fine. You want some actual Kontent, huh? The 49ers are staring down the barrel of a Lost Season- a real lost season, where they’re good enough to pull off a few surprise wins and fuck their draft position but not good enough to actually compete.

They’ve actually had some nice drafts- DeForest Buckner made his first Pro Bowl, Mike McGlinchey was not the total reach that he appeared to be at 9, Dante Pettis can ball and the aforementioned George Kittle was obtained in the 5th round. Solomon Thomas looks to be an expensive bust, and it appears that Nick Bosa has a hit put out on him by the Travaglini Family, but these are relatively pedestrian fuckups for an organization this dysfunctional. They also picked up a pair of fallen-out-of-the-first-round receivers in Deebo Samuel and Jalen Hurd, who could give Nick Mullens some real weapons on the outside.

Yes, Nick Mullens. Because we all know that Jimmy Garoppolololololo isn’t going to make it out of Week 1 intact. I’m betting he’ll get kinda-injured (elbow injury, sprained ankle, etc.) and Kyle Shanahahanananan will try to nurse him along for another 3 ineffective starts before all of his tendons spontaneously dissolve.

The 49ers have the potential to actually be a passable team. Offensively, there’s no reason they shouldn’t succeed for the brief moment Garoppolo is intact- they have three legitimate running backs to go with the pass-catching options. The defense…well, that may be a problem. They managed only 7 turnovers last year- by comparison, Damontae Kazee and Eddie Jackson each had 8. Better hope MAGA Bosa gets healthy quick.

The real determinants of whether this is a 4-12 season or a 7-8-1 season are the rest of the NFC West and the AFC North, which collectively make up 10 of the 49ers’ games. RAMMIT! is likely due for a significant regression after being pants’d on international television in the Super Bowl, but no one other than Todd Gurley’s rheumetologist knows how far that regression may go. Seattle is balanced precariously on the edge of being The Team That Time Passed By as John Schneider tries desperately to plug in replacement pieces on defense to cover up for Russell Wilson’s deficiencies in everything but late-game-heroics. Kyler Murray is going to have some success early a la Rick Mirer and Vince Young, but that must be balanced against increasingly sophisticated analytics that may reveal his tendencies earlier than was generally possible in the past. And as discussed elsewhere, the AFC North is a weird-ass pyrotechnic fuckaround, where no one knows if Cleveland will actually fulfill their promise to become Not Cleveland, the Ravens are trying to figure out how to use Lamar Jackson and Pittsburgh prays Ben holds his shit together for one more year.

Are San Francisco’s players a team worth rooting for? Hell yes. Would success come at the cost of glorifying Shanahan and vindicating Jed York’s idiotic decision to hire John Lynch? Also yes. But the most important thing is this: Jimmy Garoppolo must succeed, wildly and at all costs, in order to torture New England fans with visions of what they could have had after Brady’s career ends.

Foxborough delenda est.