For our weekly check in on professional football in America for NFL Thursday, we look at the San Francisco 49ers franchise today, the once-proud team that made winning fashionable in the 1980s. But we will point out that in 79 years of existence now, the 49ers really only won “big” during a 14-year stretch from 1981 to 1994 that featured Mafia funding and a salary-cap cheating scandal. That’s not really the best impression.

Call it karma, perhaps, but whatever the reason, the NFL has not been too kind to San Francisco in the last 30 seasons. Sure, there were some nice moments here and there, but the team has lost its last three Super Bowl appearances now after starting off with a nice 5-0 mark in the NFL championship round. That’s hard for a fan base that once acted like what was would always be: a typical conservative-banker/gambler fallacy.

This year, the 49ers are 6-8 currently with less than a one-percent chance of making the postseason after losing six games by a combined 29 points—mostly due to a lot of injuries to key players in important positions and coaching blunders that continue to defy logic. Alas, the former happens to every team every year, as it is an occupational hazard for those organizations that would be pretenders to the NFL throne.

The latter issue we will discuss another day, but S.F. Head Coach Kyle Shanahan has been blowing fourth-quarter leads since he was the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons. Today, we just want to look at the differing stretches of 49ers history on the field of play, starting with the team’s 1946 origin in the AAFC (regular-season records only shown below):

  • 1946-1949: 38-14-2, with four straight second-place finishes to the Cleveland Browns
  • 1950-1969: 113-128-10, with one pretty infamous postseason appearance that crippled the team
  • 1970-1980: 66-92-2, with three straight playoff berths that all ended in losses to the Dallas Cowboys
  • 1981-1994: 159-56-1, with five Super Bowl titles and 12 playoff appearances overall
  • 1995-2002: 80-48, with just a single trip to the NFC Championship Game
  • 2003-2010: 46-82, with zero postseason berths
  • 2011-2016: 51-44-1, with a Super Bowl loss withbefore three straight non-winning seasons
  • 2017-present: 70-59, with two Super Bowl losses and two NFCCG losses, plus three losing years so far

Perhaps we broke this into too many segments, but sometimes that is needed when looking at almost 80 years of performance data. There were a lot of “bridesmaid” years for the 49ers—including 1949 when the team lost the AAFC Championship Game; 1957 when S.F. blew a big lead at home to the eventual NFL champs; and 1972 when the 49ers blew another big lead at home to the defending NFL champs. Ouch!

San Francisco also lost the NFC Championship games to the Cowboys in 1970 and 1971, coming close to reaching a Super Bowl a decade before it ever actually did so. But the tide turned for the 49ers in that dominant stretch, before they hung in for a few more seasons—twice winning playoff games by the grace of officiating errors in their favor (1998, 2002). Then the bottom fell out, deeply, of course, quickly.

Then a brief reprieve before more hard times followed, bringing us to the era now, the one that triggered this whole exploration in the first place. In reality, it’s been a hard existence for the 49ers as a whole, with the tremendous win totals of the 1981-2002 stretch. The last 14 seasons look good on paper, but not when you compare these 14 seasons (2011-2024) to the best 14-year stretch ever for the team (1981-1994). Context.

The first dominant era (159-56-1) established the team in NFL history and lore, while this second “merely successful” era (121-103-1) has not had the same effect. Just think if the 49ers had been able to punch the ball in the end zone against the Baltimore Ravens, or held on to the fourth-quarter leads they had against the Kansas City Chiefs (twice). We’d be talking about this second era in fonder terms, even with fewer victories.

There is a huge difference between the Bill Walsh/George Seifert era and the Jim Harbaugh/Shanahan era—not just in winning percentage, but in overall postseason successes. So, while the 49ers have had it good in the last 14 years, mostly, it pales in comparison to the elite level of dominance displayed in previous times by the franchise. It’s hard to fight the memories of the past, even if the present isn’t so bad. Admit it.

So, where does San Francisco go from here, assuming the organization misses the 2024 playoffs and doesn’t miraculously win a Super Bowl? Good question. Shanahan’s shortcomings, which we can discuss in full detail next week, cannot be ignored, as the pattern is there, but the injuries the team has suffered this season give him at least one more season on a short leash. If he doesn’t win it all next year? It’s time to change.