49ers' off-field rhetoric continuously fails to match the on-field product

Here's a little pop-quiz for your San Francisco 49ers' loss-week downtime.

What do the following quotes have in common?

"I can feel that everyone is pissed off, because every game that we’ve lost this year, we’ve been leading in the fourth and we just don’t finish. So, it’s kind of that urge, now we’ve got to really finish. It’s that time to come together and put teams to bed."

- Deommodore Lenoir

"It was unacceptable. We can't do that. We can't beat ourselves. Can't make those type of mistakes again. All three phases have got to play better."

- Fred Warner

";I still think it's going to come down to the same stuff. I bet these next seven games come down to the fourth quarter, and we either get it done or we don't. We've got to find a way to get it done."

- Kyle Shanahan

That's right. They're all comments after Niners losses this season.

Now, without looking, could you tell which press conference they were from?

Of course not, and therein lies the problem.

San Francisco's issues are well-documented. Some players are missing with injury, some are just flat-out not playing well, there's horrible red-zone play calling, the defense has lost it's spark, etc., etc.

You could go on for many hours listing multiple reasons, and they seem to grow in number every week.

What's infuriating is how many times we hear quotes like the above from players and people inside the organisation. Another repeated refrain is "this is not what this football team is," something that defensive leaders Fred Warner and Nick Bosa have said constantly throughout this torrid 2024 season.

But if that's the case, then what is this football team?

49ers are wholly unable to live up to their words

Because for all the rhetoric about "playing hard," "learning to finish" or "doing the fundamentals correctly," almost every Niners loss this season has followed the same path: poor effort, fundamental mistakes, and an avalanche of errors leading to the ceiling caving in, more often than not coupled with the loss of a double-digit lead.

Heck, even in some of the wins, such as over the Seattle Seahawks, Dallas Cowboys, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, these flaws have been apparent. It's then taken heroic play from the likes of quarterback Brock Purdy, running back Isaac Guerendo (now back in witness protection, by order of head coach Kyle Shanahan), and Warner himself to pull out the wins, having tried their best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

There's been no progression on any of the issues that have followed the 49ers throughout the season, and if anything, most indicators show the team getting worse.

Injuries or not, San Francisco's 38-10 capitulation to the Green Bay Packers in Week 12 was a disgrace.

You can easily accept the 49ers would drop off without Purdy, Bosa and left tackle Trent Williams because of injury. You could even accept that, even with those three, the Packers may currently be a better team than the Niners are.

But what you can't accept is another three hours of baffling decisions, elementary mistakes, ill-disciplined, feckless play, and basically everything else bad we've seen from San Francisco this season.

Yet players expect to be taken seriously when they stand up in a press conference after the game and say they feel a sense of urgency? Or listened to when they espouse "that's not what this football team is?"

Well, here's a reality check for the many millionaires wearing 49ers colours: You are what your record says you are, as legendary head coach Bill Parcells once said. And the fact is, you and the rest of this San Francisco team are, at present, a team of phonies, too focused on saying the right things in front of a microphone instead of doing the right things on the field.

There's no urgency, there's no fight, and most of the top players feel like they took their good seasons, banked a big contract, cashed out, then checked out.

Time is running out for that narrative to change.

Less words, more action.

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