Few seasons for the San Francisco 49ers have gone by in recent years without the existence of significant obstacles. The infamous 2020 post-Super Bowl season saw the team completely decimated by injuries that dropped the 49ers from the 2019 NFC Champs to 6-10 idiots. They’ve had some bad luck and a lot of bad times during that span, but have managed to be in the postseason mix every year since, making three NFC Championship appearances, with a Super Bowl berth as well.

After last February’s NFL championship loss to the Kansas City Chiefs, many predicted the 49ers were headed for a major Super Bowl hangover. There may be some truth to that prediction, but the situation is fixable, even though the 49ers haven’t played exceptional ball through nine games.

The 49ers lost a few key players this offseason, but they also made some nice upgrades to counteract those losses. A stellar draft for San Francisco has now turned into an improved offensive powerhouse for 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan to deploy, and some impressive rookies on defense (Cornerback Fox Green and security Malik Mustaphathe most important of them) have added to the depth of the team’s roster.

But now, halfway through the 2024 season, things seem off within the team, and not in a trivial way.

The 49ers offense remains potent, ranking in the top three in the NFL, a notable feat considering it was done without a star receiver. Brandon Aiyuk and the megastar running back Christian McCaffrey. But that ranking aside, they don’t seem to be dominating anyone — and that’s a huge change from the 49ers of the last half-decade. The defense sits at a respectable 9th place, which isn’t bad considering how disjointed this unit has played at times. The 49ers’ special teams have been the dismal corner of the triad in San Francisco, ranking at or near the bottom in most statistical categories.

The 49ers, both organizationally and in the locker room, seem introspective about their choppy performance this year. They don’t panic, but they also don’t express a real sense of urgency in solving their problems. And given the risky nature of the seas ahead, this doesn’t seem like an ideal situation. Panic is destructive, but a heightened awareness of danger can be helpful, and so far the 49ers don’t appear to possess that.

They won more than they lost, and even if the statistics don’t bear it out, the quarterback Brock Purdy is playing the best games – or at least the most instinctively advanced games – of his career. His ability to create something from nothing, come back from adversity, and step up when it counts has grown. But that’s an advantage overshadowed by the fact that the 49ers just don’t look good.

Since Shanahan and 49ers general manager John Lynch joined the team in 2017, San Francisco’s culture has changed and much of the team’s winning ways during the Jim Harbaugh years have been restored. The 49ers became a team that not only made the playoffs, but fought their way through teams to get there. Part of that cultural shift involved the team sticking with the players and ideas the organization was already committed to. The 49ers became less responsive to the surging waves of the NFL as they chose to “stay the course” with most of what they did, and that included roster picks. While this conservative, rigorous approach to decision-making kept the team on track most of the time, it also created some unnecessary swirls in the water along the way. Shanahan seems to be stuck at times doubling both questionable players and questionable play calls. And since then he has developed an apparent tendency to try to force square pegs into round holes with both.

Examples of underperforming players on the roster are not uncommon for the 49ers Faithful. Nor do team memorabilia sit idly by when big players elsewhere in the NFL unexpectedly become available. What infuriates fans of the team is that the 49ers seem to take hours to change things when it appears to everyone that changes actually need to be made. It often feels like other organizations can zigzag on decisions while the 49ers use a process that has the reaction time of turning an ocean liner in ice-covered waters. Is this partly the result of biased perception? Probably. But there’s little debate that the 49ers aren’t making decisions quickly. Or at least not as quickly as they could.

This feeling of being slow to respond was at the root of the Brandon Aiyuk contract fiasco, where the season opener almost arrived with Aiyuk still lying on his couch. Much of that delay was caused by Aiyuk himself, but the team’s reluctance to secure him earlier in the offseason was both excruciating to watch and ultimately hurt the offense’s ability to get into rhythm from the start. You can attribute this to the nature of the contract negotiations, but whatever the origin, it shows a lack of attention to the passage of time, which is largely killing the 49ers as a team right now.

Shanahan himself, despite his status as an offensive guru, can often find himself forced to force his pre-formed plan during games, rather than acting reflexively on what’s happening in real time. His overall success as a head coach is undeniable, but he has locked himself into a wheelhouse that ultimately makes him appear stubborn in what he does with his play sheet and has created a reputation for him as a coach who doesn’t can’t hang on to a lead.

The 49ers have improved in some areas of their game since the start of the season, but not enough and not with any consistency. Heading into Week 11, we still don’t know who the 2024 49ers are, and that’s extremely deflating for both fans and the team.

Are the players themselves frustrated by the frenetic pace at which the team is evolving? Probably. A secondary incident Sunday in which the 49ers’ most unique weapon, Deebo Samuelexchanged words with Kicker Jake Moody and long snapper Taybor pepper After Moody missed his third field goal of the day, it ultimately wasn’t a big deal, but it’s proof there’s frustration on the court. Deebo later apologized for the sideline skirmish, but in a broader sense he wasn’t wrong to express that emotion. The 49ers stuck with their second-year kicker despite Moody’s obvious reliability issues. This is commendable from a human resources perspective, but ultimately it may not be a very smart football move.

Since the beginning of the Shanahan and Lynch era, the 49ers have been careful and calculated in what they do, and with a few exceptions, that philosophy has worked well. In San Francisco, nothing is ever done in a hurry, and that’s not a terrible thing, because in the NFL, hasty decisions often spell disaster. We can look at what’s happening now in Cleveland and New York to see this in color. But there’s a happy medium between being rushed and being too cautious, and the 49ers need to, as an organization, find that spot. The 49ers had an opportunity to make a bold move during the midseason trades just a few weeks ago and instead decided not to move. Maybe the sting of the Trey Lance fiasco still lies in the sore tissues, but it shouldn’t be so painful that it prevents the team from moving quickly to change game plans, invest in new players or even eliminate players who don’t carry the role. load.

The concepts Kyle Shanahan has been sending out onto the field aren’t working consistently and have become largely thin and predictable. This isn’t entirely on Shanahan’s shoulders, as the rest of the league has been attuned to his moves and the element of surprise has diminished. But the team’s horrendous YAC dive (yards after catch) should ring alarm bells. But that doesn’t seem to do much for Shanahan, or even the players. Every week, the post-match reporters are full of the usual language: we have to do better; We’ll take it one game at a time; It’s a long season.

It’s a long season indeed, but it fades away quickly and the alarm doesn’t seem to be ringing anywhere in the building. This cool, collected attitude is typical of the 49ers and their organizational philosophy, and it exudes confidence at 8-1. At a click above .500 and trying to grind out wins every week, that confidence looks more like negligence. The team is out of sync, and if the bilge pumps don’t start expelling bad water soon, the ship will stop moving and be at the mercy of the current.

Waiting out problems, staying the course, sailing ahead and hoping the fog clears: these are the methods that have served the 49ers well in the past. And maybe they still can. But there are squalls to come, and at 5-4, the sea is not likely to be very mild. The 49ers need to find ways to change course and they need to do it quickly. If that means Shanahan creates a new bag of tricks, brings in new faces, or gets rid of faces that continue to struggle week to week, so be it.

Despite the problems of the first half of the season, the 49ers can still participate in the Super Bowl. It is an exceptional team with a talented squad and an excellent technical staff. And winning is in their DNA. Few teams have managed to play consistently powerful football. The team’s long-standing philosophy doesn’t need to change, but perhaps its energy level and sense of urgency does. At least for the next few months.

Deebo Samuel expressed it quite well, and even if his manners were not the best, the energy was there.

Lock in.