49ers bad drafts forced them to retread rather than reset
The 49ers held their last practice in front of fans this week, and nothing this training camp has gotten the faithful hooting and hollering more than two particular players.Any play involving red jersey No.57 and white jersey No.
19 generally elicits a big reaction.Almost a month in, maybe the most exciting element of Niners camp so far has been the reunions with linebacker Dre Greenlaw and receiver Deebo Samuel.Everybody is happy to have two well-liked and familiar faces back in the building.But isn’t this time of year to dream about the future, not to soak in the past?Training camp is supposed to be where prospects become players.
It’s where the next wave of talent proves it can compete at the NFL level.Position battles give way to the roster’s new era.That’s not happening in Santa Clara.
Not like it is in 31 training camps around the league.The Niners are still waiting for the next generation to arrive.Depending on the source, the roster assembled by head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch ranks as either the oldest or the second oldest in the NFL.The current leadership counts as among the most successful and stable in the league.But the same core group of players that took them to their first Super Bowl seven seasons ago remains, in large part, the same one still trying to break through for their first Lombardi Trophy.There’s a reason Shanahan is one of the NFL’s three longest-tenured coaches.
It’s a hard thing to do to build a backbone as sturdy as Samuel, Greenlaw, Fred Warner, Nick Bosa, George Kittle and Kyle Juszczyk, who all played in that Super Bowl 54 loss to the Chiefs.More recently, the 49ers have shown just how hard it is to pull off.All of the aforementioned players, with the exception of Juszczyk, were acquired via a bountiful run of drafts from 2017-19.With a few key exceptions, most notably a certain seventh-round quarterback in 2022, that well has since dried up, leaving the 49ers without a clear next chapter.Th...