4 early signs SF 49ers are in Super Bowl hangover

The SF 49ers’ “revenge tour” hasn’t gotten off to a good start with the team beginning 2020 with a 2-2 record. Is it officially a Super Bowl “hangover?”

It’s weird to think the SF 49ers are merely a .500 team a quarter of the way through the 2020 regular season.

But after disappointing and relatively ugly losses to the Arizona Cardinals and Philadelphia Eagles in Weeks 1 and 3, that’s where head coach Kyle Shanahan’s squad finds itself. In fairness, the Niners had excellent chances to win both of those games. Not doing so, however, paints a picture of stark contrast to the 13-3 team that made it to within 10 minutes of pulling off a victory in Super Bowl LIV last February.

It’s almost painful to say it. But it’s looking like San Francisco is in a bit of the proverbial Super Bowl “hangover.”

No Super Bowl-losing team ever wants to admit this. “It won’t happen to us” and “we’re built differently” are some commonly used phrases players on the losing end will often say, and the SF 49ers aren’t an exception. There’s good reason to be optimistic, too. In the previous 10 years, six of the 10 Super Bowl losers at least made it back to the playoffs, although only the 2018 New England Patriots managed to win the big game after losing it the previous year.

Thanks to that loss to Arizona, however, the Niners find themselves in last place in an extremely challenging NFC West.

The slow start is one sign Shanahan and Co. are going through that Super Bowl hangover. But there are more troublesome reasons that help explain what’s going on behind San Francisco’s sluggish start to its 2020 revenge-tour campaign.

Here are four of them.