The 49ers still have two games left to play this season, but their vision is firmly on 2025.
After making the Super Bowl last season, the expectation was that the Niners would contend for the title again this year but they are 6-9 and out of the playoff race heading into Monday night’s game against the Lions. There were a slew of injuries to key players on the way to that record, but General Manager John Lynch pointed to Monday’s opponent as a reason why the team can’t simply point to injuries as an explanation during a Friday appearance on KNBR.
Lynch didn’t expand on what else he’s identified as the reasons for the team’s tumble down the standings, but said he has strong belief that the team will move things back in the right direction in 2025.
“It’s not somewhere where we want to be again, but we’re here this year,” Lynch said, via 49ersWebzone.com. “Can’t believe we’re here, but we are. And we have to accept that. We have to learn from it. We can’t just chalk it up to there were a lot of injuries. Well, the team we’re playing, Detroit, they had a lot of injuries, but they found a way. And so, we’ve got to look at the root. We have been looking at the root causes. We’ll fix it. We’ve got a lot of great players and a lot of great people that we want to be a part of the solution moving forward, and we’ll go find the other parts of our team to get us back to where we belong. And that’s competing for championships, and I’m confident in our plan to do that.”
The work to turn the 49ers back around will begin in earnest in a couple of weeks. For now, the team will just hope to avoid any further injuries that might hamstring their attempt to climb back up the mountain next year.
