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[San Francisco 49ers]

What will make the 49ers’ 2025 season a disappointment? A nightmare?

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Hard to say what counts as disappointing. Brock Purdy regresses? Brandon Aiyuk misses the season? 49ers fans have lived through worse. They don’t do average years—it’s either “almost there” or “burn it down.”

Around these parts, many fans may tell you the season is a trainwreck if the 49ers don’t win every game (including their preseason contests). You can be a bit more modest and say not making the Super Bowl is an abysmal failure. In 2024, that was true—the 49ers were a Super Bowl team, but then Dial-A-Injury came to collect interest from 2023, along with a defensive coach in over his head, and a special teams coach that had been on the staff a few seasons too long.

It’s an understatement to say the 49ers' 6-11 record in 2024 was a disappointment. That was a nightmare. A nightmare to endure week after week of watching the team get a lead, someone get injured, and the lead gets blown in a variety of ways.

Ok, so let’s look to 2025: What would you say is a “disappointment” this year? Things are a lot different. Do you still think the 49ers not making the Super Bowl is a disappointment? The playoffs?

What would you say would be a nightmare of a season? For 49ers fans, they may only know what nightmares are given how ridiculous the bad seasons go.

Bleacher Report’s nightmare scenario for the 49ers centers on Brock Purdy and the team being financially handcuffed together:

Just after landing a big-money long-term contract, Brock Purdy continues to regress significantly with a depleted supporting cast, and the 49ers find themselves handcuffed for years to come.

That’s the suggestion for a nightmare? Given what fans have gone through, that sounds pretty tame. An ideal nightmare for this would be all of those things, but Purdy also goes down halfway through the season and doesn’t return until 2026. Even then, I don’t see Purdy taking that much of a step back. He wasn’t the problem in 2024. He certainly has some share of the blame, but his kicker was hit or miss, his receivers couldn’t catch, and the defense couldn’t stop Geno Smith. And Purdy had a lot of week-to-week changes in his supporting cast in 2024.

So, what do you think defines “Disappointment” and “Nightmare” for 2025?

I know the first thing everyone is going to say is that without a Super Bowl win, the season is disappointing. I’ll pump the brakes here and try to be real: I don’t think that’s happening with all the roster churn. We could say that not securing a playoff berth is disappointing; I agree there. The 49ers have the easiest schedule (on paper), and there shouldn’t be any excuse for the blown games last year to happen again.

Going deeper, I think what makes 2025 disappointing is if the second-year players don’t develop further. The rookies stole the show multiple times last year when everyone else was sidelined by the injury bug. Hopefully, a full offseason and that experience will make them ready to take the team further, and the 49ers can retain some young stars.

2025 will be disappointing if we see a significant step back from Brock Purdy. He won’t have the offense this year that he had during the 2023 campaign, again, but he will have a more secure-functioning defense. I won’t say more talented, because that 2023 defense was darn good, but without the coaching hoopla we came to love with Steve Wilks, the defense will be less dysfunctional.

This is coming from someone who has criticized Robert Saleh for miscommunications that have plagued his defenses for critical moments (one being the Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs a few years back).

I’d be elated to see the 49ers win a Super Bowl, but not getting there wouldn’t be a disappointing season. There’s been a lot of roster attrition and a youth movement of sorts on the 49ers. I’d like to see the second-year players take another step to solidify their play, and I’d like to see a display from the rookies not unlike last year’s mess (now that season WAS a disappointment).

Thing is, the 49ers don’t really do disappointing seasons. They either hand you an A or drop a full-blown F. The 49ers either have a good season that ends with disappointment (because, 49ers) or their seasons are so far from anything positive, you’d have to buy into several GPUs to crunch all the numbers necessary to prove positive data.

Which leads me to what a nightmare is. 49ers fans know what nightmare seasons are. 49ers fans are desensitized to nightmare seasons. When you ask a 49ers fan what a nightmare season is, several examples can be provided with little trouble. At this point, 49ers fans would like anything other than a nightmare. If things go wrong, they go off the rails. What’s a nightmare? If Dial-A-Injury returns yet again. That roster has too much youth on it and contracts with 1-2 years left, which can be disrupted by season-ending injuries in August and September. Everyone remembers 2018 and Dial-A-Injury showing up to claim Jimmy Garoppolo. Then more came from there. How can offensive players get better when their quarterback is out for the season?

What do you think makes the 49ers' season disappointing? What would make it an absolute nightmare?

Source: https://www.ninersnation.com/2025/6...9ers-2025-season-a-disappointment-a-nightmare

 

[San Francisco 49ers]

Former first-round pick’s recent extension could give 49ers a blueprint for next contract negotiation

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The 49ers’ next contract negotiation could be with Jauan Jennings, and the recent extension for Rashod Bateman may be what they have in mind for the wideout.

The 49ers are done with their significant business in terms of contract extensions after quickly moving to get George Kittle, Brock Purdy and Fred Warner tied to long-term deals.

Though Trent Williams and Kyle Juszczyk are set to be free agents in 2027 — with both potential candidates for retirement following the 2026 season — the 49ers don’t have a prospective contract saga with a star player on the horizon.

However, they do have a decision to make regarding one of their most reliable weapons on offense.

Jauan Jennings signed a two-year extension last offseason coming off a hugely impressive performance in Super Bowl 58 and subsequently produced the best season of his career, with only a bizarre ejection in the Week 18 finale robbing him of a 1,00-yard campaign.

Jennings will be a free agent in 2026 and, while the 49ers probably won’t be focusing on getting him signed to a new deal in the immediate future as they concentrate on getting ready for the 2025 season, they will eventually need to decide whether to get out in front of his pending free agency and enter negotiations with his camp.

San Francisco last November signed Deommodore Lenoir to an in-season extension, signing the cornerback to a long-term deal before he had a chance to hit the market.

Set to turn 28 next month, Jennings’ 2026 free agency would represent his first and probably last opportunity to cash in and earn a lucrative contract following his hugely impressive rise from seventh-round pick to a now very dependable WR2.

The prospect of Jennings doing as Lenoir did and signing an extension in season likely hinges on three factors. The first two are his desire to do so, and his play on the field. These are obvious and they are linked. If Jennings wants to learn his value on the open market, then he won’t have any interest in signing an extension during the season, and his value in free agency will be much higher if he thrives again as he did in 2024.

But the third factor doesn’t concern the performance of Jennings, but that of his teammates. The 49ers have invested heavily in the wide receiver position in recent drafts, taking Ricky Pearsall in the first round last year and taking Jacob Cowing (2024) and Jordan Watkins (2025) with fourth-round selections, with the latter already receiving hype from Purdy for his performance in OTAs.

Pearsall, Cowing and Watkins are of a different mold to Jennings. They are smaller and shiftier, with the latter duo possessing the speed to take the top off defenses.

But if Pearsall and one of Cowing or Watkins shines and make prominent contributions in 2025, it could decrease the 49ers’ motivation to make a concerted effort to keep Jennings around.

Still right now it is difficult to see the 49ers not wanting to re-sign Jennings, given his prowess in clutch situations and his outstanding play as a blocker.

And they received a potential blueprint for another Jennings extension this week when the Baltimore Ravens signed 2021 first-round pick Rashod Bateman to a new three-year deal.

Bateman inked a deal worth $36.75 million with $20 million guaranteed. The average annual value of his extension is $12.25 million.

Having underwhelmed a first-round pick, Bateman’s numbers are markedly similar to those of Jennings.

A 2024 season in which he went for a career-high 756 receiving yards and racked up nine touchdowns inflated Bateman’s numbers through the first four seasons of a career that has endured several injury-related disruptions to 1,923 yards and 13 touchdowns.

The yardage number is slightly below the 1,938 receiving yards recorded by Jennings, who also had 13 regular-season touchdowns in his career. Bateman, however, has been the slightly more efficient receiver in terms of yards per reception, averaging 13.9 to Jennings’ 12.5.

With their close proximity in terms of numbers, the 49ers could consider an offer of $12.25 million a year to be a fair one for Jennings. It would not see him earn anywhere close to top of the market money, but it would still represent a considerable increase on the two-year, $15.4 million extension he signed last year.

On the other hand, Jennings could point to advanced numbers that point to him being superior to Bateman. He averaged 2.5 yards per route run to Bateman’s 1.9 last year and finished 20th in total Expected Points Added among wide receivers last season. He was eight spots ahead of Bateman despite running 372 routes to Bateman’s 387.

With his added value in the blocking game and his previous history of coming up huge in clutch moments in both the regular season and the postseason, a strong first half of the 2025 season may put Jennings in a position to command a good deal more than Bateman’s average annual salary.

Still, if and when the 49ers come to the negotiating table with Jennings’ representatives, Bateman’s contract could be the one they seek to work towards.

Source: https://www.ninersnation.com/2025/6...ion-49ers-blueprint-next-contract-negotiation