Welcome to NFL expectation season, where everyone makes their predictions for the upcoming campaign, for this, the most volatile team sport in the world.
And perhaps no team in the NFL is more volatile — in both good and bad ways — than the 2025 49ers.
So after a six-win season from hell, what are the 49ers planning on being this year? What’s the true goal inside the building?
I’m asking.
And with three weeks until the Niners are scheduled to open their season in Seattle, well, the Niners are asking the same questions.
Push away all the quotable platitudes about standards and how only a sixth Lombardi trophy will do — the truth is that the 49ers don’t really know what they are yet.
And if you find that gray area uncomfortable, imagine how the coaches and players feel.
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They have future Hall of Famers, an underrated quarterback, an elite coaching staff, and what might be the easiest schedule the NFL has issued this century. (Combined 2024 winning percentage of the 2025 slate was .415.) And all of those things are viable reasons to believe in the 49ers to bounce back this campaign.
These guys should win a bunch of games, right?
The 49ers’ win total in Las Vegas (but let’s be honest, it’s really just on your phone) is 10.5. That’s a clear expectation from bookies and the marketplace that the Niners are expected to be a playoff team this year.
But even head coach Kyle Shanahan is pumping the brakes a bit.
The 49ers head coach was on Sirius XM NFL radio this week and in a few moments of refreshing candor compared this year’s 49ers team to the 2017 and ’18 editions.
Those teams won 10 games… total.
But Shanahan isn’t wrong. The Niners doubled (tripled? Quadrupled?) down on the team’s stars-and-scrubs model from recent years. It’s a model that worked great when the team was healthy in 2023 and failed miserably when the other shoe dropped in 2024.
And back in 2017 and 2018, the roster was just scrubs — no stars.
But those scrubs eventually turned into the foundation players of a two-time NFC champion.
A reminder: the 2025 Niners have 17 rookies on their training camp roster. Seventeen!
Outside of the team’s established studs, there’s not a lot of experience to be found elsewhere on this team. The front office cleared out the vast majority of its middle-class veterans this past offseason for cash-saving purposes and left those spots to be filled with kids.
It leaves a roster that is equal parts win-now and early-stage rebuild.
“We’re kind of in the in-between,” Shanahan said.
But that’s bad branding, so let me phrase it another way: The Niners are living the Warriors’ two-timeline plan better than they ever could.
And that leaves a football team where any outcome is possible.
The floor is, believe it or not, lower than it was last year. If those top players are injured again, six wins might be considered an accomplishment for all these children.
But it’s not unreasonable to imagine a world where the young players find their footing, the top players push for MVPs and Defensive Player of the Year honors (meaning they stayed healthy) and the 49ers are the team to beat in the NFC this season.
As I said, these Niners are volatile.
So what path are they expecting to take?
Whichever one shows itself.
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The first five weeks of the season — capped by a Thursday night game against the Rams — will represent a viable checkpoint for San Francisco. In that five-game span are three division games, including the season opener in Seattle.
Coming out of that “mini-bye,” I imagine we’ll be hearing one of two things.
1. Of course we’re not going to compete for the division title. Why did you expect us to do anything this season? Have you seen all these kids? We’re building for 2026.
2. How dare any of you doubted us. Organizations win football games, and we’re clearly the best there is.
Somehow, both statements are currently correct. This is a Schrodinger’s Cat of a football team. (Schrodinger’s catch and run?)
The nerds down the street from the Niners’ facility would say this team is in a state of quantum superposition.
(Yes, of course I had to look that up. And no, I still don’t totally get it.)
It all leaves us in a not-so-fun place. We have to wait and see. That’s all we can do with the 49ers this season.
Because if the Niners don’t have any idea who they are going to be, how could we?