How much longer will 49ers be a super-team?

When contracts, age, and lack of draft picks bring 49ers back to Earth: Seaside Joe 1744

Having written about 20,000 articles in my career, I can usually sense the response to a headline from the moment I write it and that gives me an ability to get ahead of some comments, so let me start with that: The real answer to the question is “Nobody knows”.

If we could predict the future of teams, certainly we would have implored the Seattle Seahawks to draft Brock Purdy at literally any point in 2022 so that the San Francisco 49ers didn’t have a “Get Out of Garoppolo Free” card.

That ONE move, allowing the 49ers to spend less than $15 million on the QB position this year ($8 million to Trey Lance’s dead money, $5 million to Sam Darnold, less than $1 million to Purdy) and who knows how little next year ($5.5 million more to Lance, still only $1 million to Purdy), could extend San Francisco’s ability to extend several of their star players and to potentially get even better in 2024 free agency.

That’s a problem for the Seahawks, as it now feels like the 49ers are merely toying with Seattle ever since Russell Wilson vs. Jimmy Garoppolo turned into Geno Smith or Drew Lock vs. Brock Purdy.

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“So you’re saying you BELIEVE in QB winz?!”

I’m saying that coincidentally or not, the timeline of series dominance switched in 2022, for whatever reason. It just so happens that the quarterback changes are a convenient way to wrap a bow on the fact that the Seahawks had won 17 of 20 against the 49ers prior to these last five losses in which Seattle has looked helpless.

“C’mon, Joe. It’s not THAT bad! You’re overreacting!”

The Seahawks have lost 27-7, 21-13, 41-23, 31-13, and 28-16. When Seattle was beating San Francisco by margins like those, Seahawks fans were just as happy then as 49ers fans are now to say that “this is not a rivalry”.

When the Seahawks and 49ers meet next season, what are the chances that the two teams are more evenly matched, or better, that Seattle is back in the lead? There are no easy answers, but Pete Carroll was more forthcoming as ever to say that players didn’t execute what they were taught and coached to do in the week leading up to the game, specifically calling out Jamal Adams and Julian Love.

As noted by Tyler Alsin on Field Gulls, the Seahawks are the worst team in the league at stopping Christian McCaffrey, they had the second-worst defensive performance of the season in yards per play (ahead of only Denver’s 70-point bomb against the Dolphins), they’ve had the worst run defense in the NFL for the last two months, and 10 of their 15 worst games in franchise history in yards allowed have come since 2020.

Conversely, the 49ers are going to win the division for the third time in five years, they will be heavy favorites to reach the NFC Championship game for the fourth time since 2019, they have the number one scoring defense for the second year in a row, and they’ve had a top-5 offense in three of the last five years. By DVOA, the Niners rank 1st on offense and 4th on defense.

In fact, think about how much you respect Miami’s offense: The difference between the 49ers offensive DVOA and the Dolphins in second place is almost as great as the difference between the Dolphins and the fifth-place Cowboys. It’s the same difference between the Cowboys and a completely average offense. So San Francisco compared to Dallas (the number one scoring team in the NFL) is similar to Miami compared to Seattle.

If the rose-colored glasses are too thick for the Seahawks, then instead let’s say that it’s the same as the difference between the Dolphins and Saints. Or Chargers. I mean, Seattle has scored 10 more points than the Bears have this season. (Not that you need a gut punch, but the Seahawks -38 and Bears -39 have almost identical point differentials this season.)

The difference between the 49ers offensive efficiency and the Seahawks is 32 percentage points. That’s roughly how much better Seattle’s offense is than the Carolina Panthers.

“I HATE the 49ers, so this section of the article SUCKS!!!”

We all do. It’s the one thing that fans of the other 31 teams can agree about. But this is nonetheless the situation other NFL teams are in, having to look up at the 49ers and also knowing that most of their best players are not in the final valuable season of their careers. So how much longer could it last? This article isn’t going to tell you that I KNOW the answer to that question, but using salary cap futures, probabilities to determine when certain careers will end or decline, and San Francisco’s recent/upcoming draft decisions, I’m comfortable making an estimate.

For Seahawks fan who desperately want to mark “Niners Died This Day” on their calendars, this is the Seaside Joe episode for you…And we are starting this off with some very, very good news: