The 49ers’ 2022 season has turned into a pretty special one, but that doesn’t mean Kyle Shanahan and Co. have wholly avoided disappointments.
For the first time in Kyle Shanahan’s head-coaching career, he’ll be taking a team to the postseason in back-to-back years.
This, after the San Francisco 49ers made it all the way to the NFC Championship game a season ago and then backed it up with an NFC West championship after defeating the Seattle Seahawks in Week 15.
Generally speaking, the Niners’ 2022 campaign has been a successful one. Sure, the opening weeks were a bit frustrating and marred with offensive underachievement, defensive inconsistency and losses that shouldn’t have been.
However, particularly after the midseason trade for All-Pro running back Christian McCaffrey, Shanahan has watched his team take off in the right direction.
Perhaps to the point of being the most vaunted squad in the conference.
All that said, though, there have been some major disappointments along the way. While it helps to be positive, let’s take a look at those disappointing parts of San Francisco’s 2022 campaign and see where things could have been better.
Disappointment No. 1: 49ers lose Trey Lance to season-ending injury
A year removed from the aggressive trade-up to land him in the 2021 NFL Draft, 2022 was supposed to be the year in which quarterback Trey Lance flashed his merits and skill set to the point of giving Shanahan an offense the likes of which hadn’t been seen in the Bay Area for years.
Forget the awkwardness that surrounded Lance’s predecessor, Jimmy Garoppolo. 2022 was going to be the Lance show.
Until it wasn’t.
That broken ankle suffered in Week 2 against the Seahawks put a stop to any hope of Lance being a household name, and it’ll only delay his impact for the 49ers another year.
Good thing the Niners held onto Jimmy G, right, except he was lost to an injury late in the season, too, opening up the door for a third-string rookie, Brock Purdy.
San Francisco has all kinds of quarterbacking questions to answer this season, and it’s a shame Lance has somewhat been pushed to the periphery of many of those discussions.
His future is as unclear as ever, and that’s a disappointment.
Disappointment No. 2: Jimmy Garoppolo’s tenure with 49ers is likely over
Speaking of Jimmy Garoppolo, one could make the argument his 2022 campaign was the best of his pro career.
After all, he was instrumental in helping get the 49ers offense back on track after a lackluster start and amid handling what was an awkward offseason with nothing but class.
Statistically, Garoppolo was great. He had a 4-to-1 touchdown-to-interception ratio with 16 touchdowns thrown against four interceptions, and his interception percentage over 11 games played was only 1.3, the lowest it had ever been in his career as a starter.
His passer rating of 103.0, meanwhile, was the highest it had ever been since joining the Niners back in 2017.
Now, with Garoppolo shelved with an ankle injury, there seem to be questions about whether he’ll be available for the playoffs. One report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter suggested a return during the divisional round, while another from NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport said Garoppolo would be out longer than that.
If the latter is true, Garoppolo likely won’t return to San Francisco in 2023 unless it’s in a starter’s role, and it’s just as probable his days on the field with the 49ers are now over.
Disappointing way to go out, yes.
Disappointment No. 3: 49ers’ 2022 NFL Draft class has underwhelmed
Before you start complaining, yes, Brock Purdy has been a hidden-gem find from the 49ers’ 2022 NFL Draft.
And if Purdy continues to play well this season and next, perhaps he’ll be one of the best hidden-gem finds of this era. Let’s hope, right?
Other than that, though, the bulk of the Niners’ draft class hasn’t been overly impressive. Yes, EDGE Drake Jackson has three sacks and has developed an ability to swat down passes at the line of scrimmage.
However, after San Francisco’s top pick of the draft, the impressive performances thin out quite a lot.
Running back Tyrion Davis Price (Round 3) has been an almost-weekly inactive, while speedy wide receiver Danny Gray (Round 3) is either hurt or hasn’t shown the ability to block enough to get in the game plan. Lineman Spencer Burford (Round 4) is a rotational guard, and that’s OK. But the selections from fifth-round cornerback Samuel Womack all the way down to no-longer-on-the-roster corner Tariq Castro-Fields in Round 6 haven’t made much of a dent at all.
For now, it seems as if Purdy, Jackson and Burford have to shoulder the weight of this draft class entirely, particularly the misses in the middle rounds.
Disappointment No. 4: Early season losses to the Bears, Broncos
Nearly every team each season, including the good ones that make the playoffs, wind up suffering a loss or two that both sting and stick around as head-scratchers.
The 49ers had a couple of those happen right away at the outset of the season.
Week 1’s loss on the road to the Chicago Bears was weird, yes, and the rainy conditions didn’t make life easier. However, looking back at how the 19-10 defeat at the hands of quarterback Justin Fields and the Bears set the tone for the Trey Lance era, it’s hard to say that loss won’t leave a stain.
Same with that forgettable outing in Week 3 on Sunday Night Football against quarterback Russell Wilson and the Denver Broncos. Yes, that was ugly, too.
The Bears and Broncos have three and four wins, respectively, and the Niners would love to have gotten one of those in the bag.
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Particularly with playoff seeding starting to matter each and every week. Currently in the No. 3 seed heading into Week 16, San Francisco would have been in the second seed if it had just one more win, as the No. 2-seeded Minnesota Vikings have a worse conference record than the 49ers right now.
If the Niners wind up losing a road game in the playoffs that otherwise might have been at home if they were just slightly higher in the standings, either of those two forgettable losses would be ranked as a massive disappointment.