For months, it has hung over the 49ers.
Call it a hangover, a let-down, or karmic retribution, but 12 weeks into the season, they haven’t been able to shake it.
In fact, it just keeps getting worse.
The Niners have put some duds on the board this lost campaign, but none of their underwhelming performances quite compare to Sunday’s 38-10 loss to the Packers in Green Bay.
Is the Niners’ season technically over at 5-6? No.
But it is spiritually over.
It might have been over before it started: the 2020 vibes emanating from this team since the Super Bowl loss in February have been unmistakable.
Now, they’re undeniable. The Niners are just repeating unfavorable history at this point.
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When San Francisco came out of the mid-season bye at 4-4, the team had one rule for the second half: don’t lose back-to-back games.
Do that, and your fate will fall out of your hands. And fate would never be on the Niners’ side this season.
Well, the Niners lost that second-straight game Sunday. It took them three weeks post-bye to provide the death knell to a cursed campaign.
And, my goodness, Sunday’s loss was an embarrassment for the Niners from start (a near-fight pre-game) to finish (Deebo Samuel refusing to talk to the media after the contest).
Need we go over what happened between those points?
Yes, San Francisco went to Green Bay down their three most important players—quarterback Brock Purdy (shoulder), defensive end Nick Bosa (oblique, hip), and left tackle Trent Williams—but the Niners continued to play the same brand of flawed football that has marred this campaign.
Green Bay didn’t even play particularly well Sunday. Packers quarterback Jordan Love — looking for deep-shot touchdowns instead of controlling the ball with a lead — messed around and offered the Niners a handful of opportunities to make Sunday’s contest a competitive game.
The Niners refused, adamantly, to take advantage. This team insists on making it hard on itself.
And in a game where a San Francisco win would only come by the smallest of margins, the Niners turned in a self-sabotaging performance for the ages, not only failing to take the Packers’ well-wrapped gifts at the start of the holiday season, but also missing tackles at a record-setting rate, committing nine penalties — including three on special teams, and turning the ball over three times.
Yes, that’s the performance the Niners delivered when only a clean game would do (and even that probably wouldn’t have been enough to win).
There was a moment halfway through the second quarter Sunday, with the Niners already down 10-0 and pinned deep in their own territory, that San Francisco’s defense had back-to-back 12-men-on-the-field penalties.
Yes, the Niners were so disorganized that they were called for a 12-man penalty, which wiped out an end-zone interception. Then, after a long stoppage, they huddled and came out with 12 on the field men again.
Let that futility sink in for a moment.
This is an unserious football team, folks.
And the Niners had to hone that level of failure over the last few months. Playoffs? Super Bowl? Get real. Sunday’s performance is what they’ve been working towards all season. The loss to the Packers was their showcase event.
So stop listening to anyone who suggests there’s a better form of football lying dormant with this team. Ignore the idea that if this team “just gets healthy,” they’ll finally look like a quality operation.
It’s a lost year — a byproduct of this war of attrition they call professional football. It stinks, sure, but it can’t be totally unexpected, either.
And I know what happens next. You might have erased it from your memory, though. I don’t blame you — it happened in 2020, after all.
Outside of there not being a worldwide pandemic, the circumstances at hand for the Niners are, frankly, shockingly similar to those of 2020. The battered-and-bruised Niners went into their Week 13, nationally televised game against Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills with a 5-6 record and a misplaced belief that if they could get back to .500 on the season, everything would be okay.
They were smoked — Allen worked them over — and the Niners admitted defeat and limped to the campaign’s finish line.
Can you guess who the 5-6 Niners play next in Week 13?
Let me put it this way: It’s not Brandon Allen.
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It’s been suggested that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
This might as well be a homonym.
So let’s learn the lesson from the past:
In a season defined by sinking play and lowered expectations, let’s skip the part where we pretend there’s something left for these Niners.
August’s malaise has turned into agony in November, and it’s only going to get worse in December.
So, if the Niners can land an ounce of luck in this campaign, let it be for their draft position in April. They wouldn’t know what to do with it otherwise.