Maybe a few months from now, the San Francisco 49ers will look back on Dec. 7, the night before they dismantled a Chicago Bears team in transition, and find their turning point. At the very least, the evening can give a proud old team some hope that all the pain, difficulty and frustration of the fall of 2024 might actually take this group somewhere.
The setting was the team hotel. The speakers were quarterback Brock Purdy and corner Deommodore Lenoir, two guys who don’t typically say much in these settings.
Lenoir detailed bonds he’s built over the course of his life, the tough places those bonds have led him and how he felt similar bonds with guys in the room. Purdy told them that it was time to play desperate. he said.
“DMo just talked about how his family has a lot of brothers, and he’s had brothers who have passed away, he has brothers who are not with him anymore,” tight end George Kittle said, over the phone, hanging out with family Sunday night, hours after the game. “He felt like when he became a 49er that he found new brothers, and he plays for us every single day. I think that resonated a lot with the team.
“Brock was, . I’m shortening that. Brock talked for a while. They both did a great job.”
Combine their messages and you can create a nice, fun story line. This aging team that’s been to four NFC title games and two Super Bowls over the past five years is feeling its football mortality, and seeing that it has one or two more shots left to win it all together as a group created a sense of urgency that led to Sunday’s blowout.
Or, it could be simpler than that. It could be that they just played better.
Either way, Sunday was the manifestation of what, justifiably, was expected of the Niners coming into 2024. It happened with Brandon Aiyuk out for the year, and Christian McCaffrey gone for the foreseeable future. It came with Trent Williams and Nick Bosa down. It happened emphatically, with a halftime box score that looked like Alabama-Mercer.
At the break, the Niners had 319 yards to the Bears’ four. The Niners had 14 first downs and the Bears had one. The Niners had the ball for 20 minutes, the Bears had it for 10. The Niners averaged 8.6 yards per play, and the Bears averaged 0.2 (not 2, 0.2).
NFL games aren’t supposed to go like that, even if one of the teams is in its first game with an interim coach who was promoted to interim offensive coordinator a month earlier.
But that’s who the Niners were on Sunday. Now, the question is, can they be that again?
And again and again and again?
