2024 is eerily mirroring another letdown year for embattled 49ers

The San Francisco 49ers are off to a very rough start in the 2024 campaign. They sit at 2-3 and two of their losses should have been easy wins.

This season is starting to feel a lot like the 2014 season for the Niners, which was a huge letdown year.

Ten years ago, San Francisco entered the season as Super Bowl favorites. The 49ers were coming off three straight seasons in which they made deep postseason runs and had one of the most talented rosters in the league.

Sounds familiar doesn't it?

The 2014 Niners had high expectations placed upon them after coming so close to making the Super Bowl in the 2011 season, nearly winning the Super Bowl in the 2012 season, and were the length of Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman's outstretched hand away from making it back to the Super Bowl in the 2013 season.

It was a given San Francisco would make the playoffs, and that belief was seemingly affirmed when it dominated the Dallas Cowboys in Week 1 and looked as if it was picking up right where it left off.

The 49ers followed that up with two straight losses and were blown out in embarrassing fashion on Sunday Night Football against the Denver Broncos. After eeking out some wins against lesser opponents to get to 7-4, they faced the Seahawks on Thanksgiving night and were embarrassed on their home turf losing 19-3.

The Niners basically imploded the rest of the season and finished the year with a record of 8-8, missing out on the playoffs for the first time under head coach Jim Harbaugh, which led to his ouster after the season due to the rift between him and then-general manager Trent Baalke.

San Francisco was felled by key injuries to players like Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman, but it also just underperformed and did not play up to expectations.

So far, it seems like the 2024 Niners are trending in the same direction.

They have dealt with key injuries on both sides of the ball, most notably to their star running back, Christian McCaffrey. But they have also just plain underperformed. The defense has not played up to the usual standard and the red zone offense has been atrocious. It has their playoff odds taking a big hit early in the season.

Ultimately, the thing the two teams seem to share in common the most is a general feeling of fatigue. It feels like the last three seasons of playing deep into the postseason has finally caught up with the 49ers the same way it did back in 2014.

It is so difficult to consistently get back to the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl. Niners fans have been spoiled because since 2011, every time the team has made the playoffs they have at least made it to the NFC championship.

When a team continually loses the big game year after year, no matter how talented the team is, it is difficult if not impossible to avoid some sort of regression.

The fire and the hunger may not be there the same way that it was back in 2019 or even how it was last year. In a recent episode of the 49ers Talk podcast, Willis spoke about how it gets harder and harder with each passing year to reach the mountaintop. As the core of the 49ers gets older, and as that hunger dims slightly year after year, it just becomes more difficult to win.

We may be seeing that same decline that we saw during the 2014 season repeating itself right before our eyes.

The season is still young, of course. The Niners have plenty of time to turn things around.

But one cannot help but feel that the injuries combined with baggage of three straight deep postseason runs that ended in defeat will mean that this 2024 team will finish around .500 and miss out on the playoffs just like the 2014 team did.

Read more from Niner Noise