Isn’t that what a champion is supposed to do?
There is no easy way to get to the top in the NFL. It’s even more difficult to remain there. When you start playing for titles and sterling silver trophies, you take everybody’s best shot. And in this strange season of COVID-19 and the unforeseen, the shots just kept coming and coming at the defending NFC champions, a combination of blows that would put most teams down for the count.
You just had to know these proud and talented 49ers would start fighting back, that they were too good and too determined and have too many places still to go not to pick themselves up off the mat.
Then again, you really had to start wondering after San Francisco’s first two-game losing streak since 2018 settled in with surely the most embarrassing and bewildering defeat of the Kyle Shanahan/John Lynch era.
It’s still a bit difficult to fathom Miami 43, San Francisco 17 in Week 5, and probably still will be as the 49ers play out the season, a season during which losses like that and the one before it against Philadelphia — both home games against losing teams that San Francisco was heavily favored to win — could hang ominously over the team’s intentions of getting back to the Super Bowl, particularly with the murderer’s-row schedule the 49ers now have ahead of them.
Esta historia es de la edición November 2020 de Niner Report.
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Esta historia es de la edición November 2020 de Niner Report.
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EIGHT IS ENOUGH
Set 49ers lineup still has several new starters
Calling all cornerbacks
Loss of Verrett exposes 49ers’ thin depth at CB
Always finding their way to run
49ers system accomplished at developing homegrown talent
ANOTHER COMEBACK?
Resilient veteran Verrett to miss rest of season
TOP 10 Rookie running backs
THE BACK LIST
STOCK UP STOCK DOWN
DEOMMODORE LENOIR | AMBRY THOMAS
Will Mostert run for 49ers again?
Raheem Mostert was primed this year to be the centerpiece of one of the NFL’s most dynamic offenses, featured as the lead performer in San Francisco’s grinding rushing attack while making his climb among the league’s top running backs.
THE WONDER OF WARNER
49ers make All-Pro star highest-paid LB in NFL
Making the right choice at QB
In the weeks that follow after you read this — and perhaps sometime even sooner than that — Kyle Shanahan and the rest of the 49ers organization will make a titanic decision that will have present, future and perhaps even everlasting implications for the franchise. It will chart the course for the team’s pivotal 2021 season while determining whether San Francisco really does have the juice to return to powerhouse status and again be considered a legitimate contender to get back to the Super Bowl.
TOP 10 Linebacker seasons
Fred Warner vaulted to stardom with a spectacular 2020 season — and the 49ers rewarded him this summer with a $95.225 million deal that makes him the highest-paid inside linebacker in NFL history. By today’s standards, Warner’s performance last year was worth the money as he posted an Approximate Value of 19 — matching the highest score ever recorded by a San Francisco defender according to a Pro Football Reference formula that puts a single number on each player-season across all positions since 1960. Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman (twice) also had seasons with an AV of 19 as they dominate this list of the greatest individual seasons by a linebacker in 49ers history.
