The 49ers keep showing up on the doorstep of greatness, and Pro Football Focus just put that frustration in black and white.
In its ranking of the 10 best teams never to win a Super Bowl, PFF included two San Francisco rosters: the 2023 49ers and the 2019 49ers. It’s another reminder of how often Kyle Shanahan’s teams have looked built for a title, only to walk away empty-handed.
Bradley Locker called winning the Super Bowl “a Sisyphean task for Kyle Shanahan,” and said the 2023 group was absolutely good enough to finish the job. San Francisco got to Super Bowl 58 with a league-best 95.3 overall PFF grade, and the team was elite on both sides of the ball, finishing no worse than third in either offensive or defensive profile.
That roster was loaded. Nine starters - six on offense and three on defense - earned at least an 84.5 grade, with Christian McCaffrey, Trent Williams, Nick Bosa and Fred Warner among the standouts.
Even the loss to the Chiefs in overtime did little to dent the team’s standing in PFF’s eyes. Locker noted that the 49ers’ 14th-best point differential in league history only reinforces how legitimate that squad was.
For all the pain attached to 2023, the 2019 team sits right there with it. Locker described that group as “a phenomenal group,” and the numbers back him up. San Francisco led the league with a 93.9 overall PFF grade, ranked no worse than sixth in EPA per play on offense or defense, and finished second in defensive grade and fourth in offensive grade.
That defense had serious punch, with Richard Sherman, Arik Armstead, DeForest Buckner and Jimmie Ward joining Bosa in the mix. The 49ers also posted the third-highest point differential that season at +169, behind only the Ravens and Patriots. Locker said San Francisco’s more balanced makeup makes it “a hair better than those two.”
Still, the ending is what lingers. The 2019 loss to Kansas City came after the 49ers led 20-10 until the middle of the fourth quarter, and the offensive approach got too conservative from there. The Chiefs seized control, and another San Francisco team that looked built for the top of the mountain fell just short.
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There is a similar sense of change at tight end, where Jake Tonges new contract extension points to a larger role behind George Kittle and hints at a different usage pattern for the offense as a whole. If Tonges is going to be on the field more often, it could naturally squeeze the snaps available to Kyle Juszczyk, which makes this one of those offseason shifts that could quietly alter how the 49ers line up in more than one way. [Read more 🡒]