San Francisco 49ers: Disastrous 2015 Offseason Not to Blame for Current Team Woes
By Peter Panacy
One of the primary arguments why the San Francisco 49ers are bad in 2016 is because of all the massive departures the team endured prior to the start of the 2015 NFL season. Looking deeper, these losses can’t be blamed for the current state of the franchise.
The 2016 San Francisco 49ers are a pretty bad team. OK, they’re really bad. And, chances are, they’ll own another top pick in the upcoming 2017 NFL Draft.
There’s a short answer why things came to be this way. And many fans and analysts point back to the horrid 2015 offseason in which the Niners lost an overwhelming abundance of talent.
Yes, it hurt. And yes, a good chunk of that talent was the reason San Francisco made it to three consecutive NFC Championship games and one Super Bowl appearance.
But we can’t simply place blame on these en masse departures from just over a year ago.
Not when we look at many of the specific players, where they are now and what kind of impact they would have had for the 49ers had they stayed in town.
No, there needs to be another reason. And we’ll get to that too. For now, let’s look back at some of the notable free-agent and retirement departures which dropped the Niners from an NFL elite team all the way down to a laughingstock.
It all stinks. Let’s just figure out why.