SF 49ers further from being considered Super Bowl contenders?

The SF 49ers took a step back from their Super Bowl ‘revenge tour’ in 2020 largely because of injuries. But there are obstacles to contention in 2021.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady winning Super Bowl LV over the team that beat the SF 49ers in the Super Bowl the previous year, the Kansas City Chiefs, raised plenty of “what if?” questions about whether or not Brady could have engineered the same kind of success with the Niners.

Probably not, especially with the swarm of injuries San Francisco dealt with over the course of 2020.

That said, it’s a fair question to wonder what the future holds for SF 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and his team heading into 2021. True, a good chunk of his roster should return this upcoming season, and the simple law of averages states the Niners can’t come anywhere close to the sheer amount of injuries suffered last year.

Yet San Francisco isn’t going to enter the offseason with relatively few roster holes to worry about. There are pass-rushing needs up front, concerns about multiple pending holes and upgrades needed along the offensive line and issues within the secondary. Fullback Kyle Juszczyk probably isn’t returning, and it’s going to be a tall order to re-sign Pro Bowl left tackle Trent Williams.

And nearly every one of the SF 49ers’ starters in the defensive backfield are hitting NFL free agency, too. With a range between $15 million and $20 million in cap space for 2021, it’ll be awfully difficult for the Niners to retain their top free-agent talent without some serious roster jockeying elsewhere.

Early SF 49ers odds to win Super Bowl LVI

While San Francisco has plenty of question marks this offseason, some of which we haven’t gotten to yet, at least the oddsmakers are feeling pretty bullish about Shanahan and Co.’s chances of winning Super Bowl LVI a little less than a year from now.

According to The Action Network, the SF 49ers have plus-1400 odds to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in 2022, which is seventh best.

The top-odds team is the Kansas City Chiefs at plus-550, while the Bucs enter at plus-900 in third place. Meanwhile, the Niners’ NFC West rivals, the LA Rams, own the division’s best odds to win the Super Bowl at plus-1200.

If there’s some solace, oddsmakers are listing San Francisco as the top sub-.500 team from last year to win the Super Bowl in 2022.

It all depends on the SF 49ers quarterback situation

While it’s debatable just how important quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was in the SF 49ers’ Super Bowl run from 2019 into early 2020, there’s a simple understanding Shanahan’s squad was dominant enough to steamroll all the way through to the Super Bowl.

But all one needs to do is look at the four teams in the conference championship round: the Buccaneers, Chiefs, Green Bay Packers and Buffalo Bills. All four of them had elite-level quarterbacks: Brady, Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers and Josh Allen, respectively. So while there’s no automatic correlation between having an elite quarterback and winning a Super Bowl, it certainly helps.

Cutting or trading Garoppolo this offseason would free up $24.1 million in cap space for San Francisco. That might help with the SF 49ers’ other free-agent needs elsewhere on the roster. Yet it opens up the obvious void.

And the only way it would be filled with the Niners maintaining a Super Bowl window would be if Shanahan and Co. somehow engineered a move for one of the league’s few elite-level QBs such as the Houston Texans’ Deshaun Watson.

Given the difficulty of that, however, the next realistic and likable option would be via the NFL Draft, assuming Garoppolo is gone, of course. The bulk of the free-agent quarterbacking class this offseason is weak, yet the draft is awfully top-heavy with talent. Plus, the difficulty with hoping for a Super Bowl win with a rookie quarterback all but pushes back a Super Bowl window by at least a year.

Perhaps more.

So the simple conclusion regarding San Francisco’s Super Bowl contention this upcoming season hinges largely on Garoppolo. Whether he remains with the team will have a massive impact on the team’s ultimate chances to land that sixth Lombardi Trophy sooner than later.