The San Francisco 49ers have plenty of star power in the 21st century, but that hasn’t been enough to crack Bleacher Report’s Bay Area sports Mount Rushmore for the past 26 years.
The list left out the 49ers entirely, even though it included San Francisco Giants icons Barry Bonds and Buster Posey, along with Golden State Warriors standouts Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. That setup makes some sense on paper.
The Giants have won three World Series this millennium, and the Warriors have piled up four championships. When you only get four spots across 26 years, somebody big is always going to miss out.
For the 49ers, the issue is simple: no rings, no place on the Mount Rushmore, at least not yet.
That could change if San Francisco finally brings home the sixth Lombardi Trophy in franchise history. If that happens in the next few seasons, the debate over who belongs on the 49ers’ version of the list gets a lot more interesting.
Brock Purdy looks like the cleanest answer, provided he’s on the field and leads the team to a Super Bowl. Quarterbacks usually get the biggest slice of the credit, fair or not, and Purdy would have the strongest case if he’s the face of a title run.
George Kittle would be right there too. Since being drafted in 2017, he has been such a massive part of the team that it’s easy to see him forcing his way into the conversation.
Christian McCaffrey is another obvious name. Since San Francisco traded for him in 2022, the offense has clearly looked different, and better. If he puts together another huge season and helps deliver a championship, he’d have a real argument.
Fred Warner deserves mention on the defensive side, but the bar for a defender is higher. He might need something dramatic - a pick-six to win the Super Bowl in overtime, or something in that neighborhood - to get the same kind of Mount Rushmore treatment.
The 49ers ruled Bay Area sports in the 20th century. In this century, the Giants and Warriors have owned the championship conversation. But San Francisco has the talent to make another run, and maybe the 2026 campaign is the one that finally gives a 49ers player a spot on that millennium Mount Rushmore.
In Other News...
Brandon Aiyuk Just Took His 49ers Breakup To Another Level
Brandon Aiyuk has taken his split from San Francisco from messy to openly combative, using social media to air out his frustration with the 49ers and make it clear he does not see a reunion coming. The posts landed as another sharp turn in a saga that has already stretched well beyond the field, with Aiyuk publicly taking aim at the organizations direction and even leaning into the local fan joke about the electrical substation near the team facility.
For the 49ers, the bigger issue now is not just the tone of the breakup but the lingering business side of it. Aiyuk remains on the reserve/left squad list and has not filed for league reinstatement, leaving his status unresolved even as the public comments continue to shape how the rest of the league views him. What once looked like a contract standoff has become something harder to repair, and the longer it drags on, the more it appears to be costing him in reputation and leverage. [Read more 🡒]
Kyle Shanahan's Super Bowl Legacy Just Took Another Brutal Hit
Kyle Shanahans rsum now carries another reminder of how often his teams have come close to the sports biggest prize without getting there. ESPN recently stacked three of his clubs among the top 10 best Super Bowl-less teams of the last 20 years, a list that includes the 2016 Falcons and both the 2019 and 2023 49ers. For San Francisco, it is a familiar and frustrating theme: a roster good enough to reach the final stage, but not quite good enough to finish the job.
The latest entry only deepens the conversation around Shanahans legacy, because the 49ers again had a chance to put a championship run away and came up short in the game that mattered most. Even with that history hanging over him, Shanahan remains in place and still has the same task ahead of him in Santa Clara. The question now is whether he can finally turn all those near-misses into the one result that has eluded him. [Read more 🡒]
49ers Could Be Headed For Their Biggest Offensive Shakeup In Years
The 49ers spent the offseason trying to sharpen an offense that has long leaned on flexibility, and the next round of decisions could change the look of the unit in a meaningful way. One of the biggest questions sits at wide receiver, where the team is weighing how to line up its starting group around Mike Evans and whether Ricky Pearsall or rookie DeZhaun Stribling can seize the job opposite him.
There is also movement at tight end, where Jake Tonges new extension suggests the 49ers see a real role for him alongside George Kittle rather than treating him as a simple backup. If that usage grows, it could ripple through the rest of the formation and leave Kyle Juszczyk with a smaller slice of the offense, another sign that San Francisco may be headed for a broader shakeup than it has made in years. [Read more 🡒]