2026: The Second Wind

Note: I wrote most of this 10 days before the 49ers opened the season against the Rams in Australia. Then they went out and beat them 27–7, doing a considerably more convincing job of making my argument than I expected.

We're down to 10 days until the 2026 NFL season kicks off, and our 49ers open with a monster matchup against the dreaded Lambs. Thursday night. Week 1. In Australia. Shanahan has the 49ers arriving a week early to get acclimated. The Rams are arriving the night before like they're channeling Charlie Sheen circa 2011. We'll soon find out which approach was superior. I prefer ours.

But as you well know, a lotta pundits have been talking ill of our team. The negativity is insane for a team that's won as consistently as this one. "Oh they're SO OLD." The Rams are young? "NFC West bro, it's so tough!" — seeming to forget the Niners are one of the reasons the division is so tough. All the way into outer space with "it's the substation lol!" Vegas doesn't seem particularly convinced we're making a deep run, either. But if we have a huge season, it wouldn't be the first time hater pundits got derailed hard by a Kyle Shanahan tour de force, would it?

Let's rewind one season. This team went 12-5 with half of a functional roster for much of the year. Bosa was gone by Week 3. Warner by Week 6. Purdy missed eight games with a toe injury while our backup, Mac Jones, went 5-3 anyway. Pearsall missed eight games. And that's barely scratching the surface.

Then they went into Philly as underdogs and KO'd the defending champs in the Wild Card round. Kittle tore his Achilles, leaving them without damn near every star outside of Purdy, CMC and Trent Williams. They won anyway. And by the time Seattle finally ended the run a week later, a D full of young players had something it couldn't have gotten from sitting behind veterans: a full NFL season and two road playoff games under its belt.

That’s the second wind: a still-in-their-prime core of stars, with a generation of young players suddenly fitted in between them.

Then came the 2026 draft. Ours was widely mocked. De’Zhaun Stribling with the first pick of the second round after trading down for more picks? Absolutely ABYSMAL, according to many of them. Even many of our “fans” were hating. One guy on X went so far as to write, “Stribling may genuinely be the single worst draft pick in the last 5 years.”

Then came the third round. The Mocksters and others who “understand drafting” knew who we should’ve taken there, too — and apparently it wasn’t Kaelon Black.

Maybe the guy on X will be right. Maybe he won’t. But declaring a player one of the worst picks in years before he’s even entered the building or played in a single practice is exactly the kind of certainty — and arrogance — about the draft that blows my mind.

Don’t mind that Stribling has since looked like one of the best rookie WRs in camp. We all saw it — the flash is there. So is the fire. Will it translate? We’ll see. That’s kind of the point. But he’s made things look very promising thus far. And that doesn’t touch the upside of other incoming rookies like Gracen Halton, Jaden Duggar, Romello Height — and yes, Kaelon Black, who looked strong in preseason.

September’s here, and unlike last season, we’re coming in pretty damn healthy. Pearsall will miss the season with a flare-up of the same injury that sidelined him last year. Let him rest and come back healthy in 2027. Beyond that, this looks much more like a normal NFL injury report than the apocalypse we dealt with last season.

Let the Rams and Seachickens get the preseason Vegas love and pundit adulation. Nobody wins a Super Bowl in August. It doesn’t change a damn thing. They still gotta play the games.

I’ve seen enough from this regime to know what that means. Shanahan and Lynch have taken this team to four of the last seven NFC Championship Games. They’ve built multiple contenders around Jimmy Garoppolo. They turned the dead-last pick of the 2022 draft into Brock Purdy. And now they’ve somehow landed Raheem Morris as Saleh’s replacement at defensive coordinator at exactly the moment this young D could use him most.

I like our chances as much as anybody else’s.