Eight years ago, 49ers CEO Jed York stood at the lectern in Levi’s Stadium and declared “I own this football team. You don’t dismiss owners.”
It was a moment of defiance born of years of incompetence—a stretch during which the 49ers had fired three head coaches in three seasons and had only 15 total wins.
And it looks like York is pulling rank once again.
That’s terrible news for the 49ers.
York, who was given the team president job by his parents at 28 and two years later became the team’s top decision-maker, had been making his presence known in the years prior to that quote.
After a down 2014 season, York fired Jim Harbaugh — you’ll never get me to say they “mutually agreed to part ways.” He then hired the woefully overmatched Jim Tomsula to replace Harbaugh, comparing the defensive line coach to Steve Kerr in the process. He fired him a year later, only to bring in Chip Kelly, whose “innovations” made a bad situation worse.
It wasn’t until the Niners were at rock bottom that York moved to the side. His hail mary heave to land Kyle Shanahan—handing a first-time head coach not only a six-year contract (two years longer than the standard) but also full personnel control, a la Bill Belichick—connected. Shanahan’s hire relegated York to the periphery—he spent his time dabbling in politics and buying soccer teams—and the Niners were unquestionably better for it.
Within three years, San Francisco was playing in the Super Bowl. Four years and three NFC Championship Games later, they were back.
But after a six-win 2024, York is seemingly up to his old tricks and making his presence known again.
And if that proves to be anything more than bluster, it’s a harbinger of more losses to come.
There really is a simple rubric: the more involved York is on the football side of the team’s business, the worse the team becomes.
Perhaps the Niners owner thought we would forget that fact over the last seven years. I imagine it won’t take long for Niners fans to be reminded of why he needed to step into the shadows in the first place.
We can all agree on this: The 49ers’ roster needs a reset. The team tried to “run it back” after their Super Bowl loss and looked old, slow, and injured. The failure to see that so many players’ window of excellence had closed is something everyone in the organization has to wear.
There is also little dispute that the supposed checks-and-balances system between the three branches of the Niners—personnel, ownership, and coaching—has become out of whack in recent years.
Shanahan had been stepping back from having complete control of the team’s roster since the equally disastrous 2020 season, letting general manager John Lynch to actually be the team’s GM and not just Shanahan’s attache that handled the minor issues and political responsibilities of the top job. But when the contract negotiations got tough, with Deebo Samuel in 2022, Nick Bosa in 2023, and Brandon Aiyuk this past season, Shanahan pulled rank and pushed through deals. The head coach couldn’t stand to lose one of his best players — dollars and cents, and his responsibility, be damned.
But just because Shanahan and Lynch — the faces of the franchise since 2017 — ran into a bad year doesn’t mean York should change what he’s doing.
Alas, when you spend money like it isn’t yours, eventually, someone sees the bill.
And the purse strings sound like they’re tightening. The trade of Samuel — despite the significant salary-cap hit that came with it — was the first sign that things have changed in Santa Clara. The lingering Aiyuk trade rumors and a reported low-ball opening offer to Purdy in contract negotiations provide further insight.
Adam Schefter recently leaked that the Niners have a “cash issue” that could limit how much they can offer Brock Purdy.
“Since Kyle and I have been here, we’ve been certainly a top-five — I believe No. 2 – cash-spending team,” Lynch said at the NFL scouting combine. “[A]t some point you have to reset a little bit or at least recalibrate. You can’t just keep pressing the pedal and I think there’s some good that could come out.”
And there’s plenty of validity to that latter statement.
But it sure sounds like something a team owner would say, no?
Ultimately, those constraints are entirely artificial.
The 49ers don’t need austerity measures. While I am not privy to the organization’s books, if the Niners are even moderately competent in how the organization is run — and all indications point to that being more than true — they should be teetering between dirty rich and filthy rich. The team values itself at $9 billion.
It also has a plum setup: laughably low rent at Levi’s Stadium, and a brand is as valuable as any team’s in professional sports.
If every NFL team brings in more than $500 million in revenue, how much are the Niners raking in annually? I can say this with certainty: the league’s television and league-marketing deals cover the full cost of even the most lavish cash-spending years, like last season when the Niners spent roughly $350 million on salary.
Yes, the league’s check should cover all football operations costs.
So why is football operations feeling the pinch? Now’s not the time to be stingy.
Yes, going younger, faster, and cheaper can be a football decision, but it doesn’t sound like it is.
That severely limits the Niners’ chances of doing enough this offseason to correct this team’s problems.
There’s a reason the Bengals, Lions, and Chargers have never won a Super Bowl.
York hasn’t won one, either.
And if he ever wants to win a Lombardi Trophy, he’d be well-served to remember that you get what you pay for in this league.
York’s job is to cut checks and sleep on a bed of money. The Niners can’t win a title if he can’t do that.
It really is a simple rubric.