These 49ers make me feel things
The NFL can often feel overly loud, generic and faceless to me. The league can produce the most intense sporting drama, especially in the final throes of big games, but there is an amorphous whirr to it all that smothers nuanced analysis.
For all the 24-hour breaking news and relentless hot-take rhetoric, it is difficult for any original insight to cut through the smog. And beneath the absorbing iconography of each team, the actual exponents of the craft – the helmeted warriors who traverse the gridiron – can seem indistinguishable.
Between Steve Mariucci howling, Pat McAfee yelling, and Scott Hanson hyperventilating, there is so much noise to negotiate that the average NFL Sunday has become an exercise in sensory overstimulation, and little of lasting consequence emerges from the numbing morass.
Maybe it’s because I’m English, marooned an ocean away from the action. Maybe it’s because I’m heavily medicated, an anxious introvert prone to depression. Or maybe it’s because Roger Goodell designed it this way – parity producing a vapid, zero-gravity flatness in addition to a wide-open playing field.
Regardless of provenance, the pervading sense of superficial sameness makes it difficult for specific iterations of NFL teams – rather than their overarching traditions, cultures and histories – to pique my interest. I’m a fluid sports fan, meaning I like multiple teams in many sports, but when it comes to the NFL, I’m drawn more towards the permanence of stadiums and uniforms than the transience of on-field nuclei.
There have been a few exceptions to that rule over the years. The Steelers of Ben Roethlisberger and Troy Polamalu were the first team to spellbind me as a kid. The Patriots of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick obviously demanded attention, too. The Packers of Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson were always compelling, while the Seahawks of Pete Carroll and Russell Wilson were eminently likeable and the Cowboys of Tony Romo, DeMarco Murray, Dez Bryant and Jason Witten inspired awe.
Right now, though, another iconic team and its similarly talented core is tugging at my heartstrings. Though battered and bruised, overwhelmed and overlooked, these San Francisco 49ers make me feel things. They make me root, ultimately – a rare feeling and a rarer admission at my supposedly unbothered age. They have an agglomeration of ability, charisma and geniality that comes around but once or twice a decade, and I have enjoyed their unlikely run to the playoffs.
A paper powerhouse, the 49ers have been perennial contenders under the aegis of general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan, dual architects of an admirable blueprint since arriving in San Francisco eight years ago. In that span, the 49ers have lost two Super Bowls and two NFC Championship Games, remaining relevant without capturing the grail. In the abstract, then, their return to the postseason is unsurprising and – to some – underwhelming. But the way this team secured a playoff berth – overcoming myriad injuries to play some of the most exhilarating football I have ever seen – is worthy of greater praise.
Sure, the Week 18 loss to Seattle, 13-3 at Levi’s Stadium, took some wind out of the 49ers’ sails. A win would have guaranteed San Francisco a first-round bye, the NFC’s top seed, and home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Still, to feel empty following the loss, and galled by the Seahawks’ unforeseen stymieing of a juggernaut offence, felt somehow novel. I didn’t just watch San Francisco misplay a potential #1 bye into a #6 visit to Philadelphia. I experienced it. And that is uncommon in my NFL journey, so readily drowned in genericism.
Prior to running into Seattle’s buzzsaw, you see, these 49ers had been as good as any NFL team I have seen in a long time – offensively, at least, while burdened by a beat-up defence. Before losing to the Seahawks, San Francisco won six straight games and averaged 35 points per game during that stretch. Returning from turf toe, quarterback Brock Purdy looked irrepressible, engineering 18 touchdowns in those six games, including back-to-back outings with five end zone visits. Accordingly, when San Francisco survived an epic 42-38 barnburner against Chicago in Week 17, with an exhausted defence producing a walk-off goal-line stand, I leapt from my couch, organically intoxicated by football for the first time in years. It took red and gold paroxysm to puncture the malaise.
Why did I find myself fist-pumping as Chicago’s Caleb Williams was harried into a terminal incomplete pass? Well, because these 49ers play just the kind of multi-faceted offensive football I enjoy – intriguing threats at tight end, wide receiver and running back orbiting an agile quarterback who can do it all. Moreover, those threats, and that quarterback, are amiable, recognisable and compelling. Their appearances are distinctive, their stories admirable. I know, instinctively, who is where, and how they all fit together – without needing binoculars, organograms and my own broadcast booth spotter. I enjoy the reassuring rhythm of this 49ers offence, and its melding of process and personality apes my football idealism.
Purdy personifies that miasma. To me, he is the quintessential quarterback – the good-looking, clean-living, All-American boy fulfilling his destiny as the heir to Montana and Young. By now, everyone knows the Purdy story – how San Francisco picked him last, 262nd overall, in 2022; how he seized an opportunity as Mr Irrelevant then never let go of that golden helmet; and how, aged 25, he landed a five-year, $265 million contract, stoking the rags-to-riches fairytale.
All that makes for great background copy, casting Purdy as the ultimate underdog, but I have always just liked the guy’s game. There is nothing he cannot do under centre, and he has an uncanny ability to pick the right tool at the right time from his understated arsenal.
To that end, even now, Purdy is chronically underrated – ESPN ranking thirteen quarterbacks ahead of him in its pre-season Top 100. (1) But if I were building an NFL franchise from scratch, there are few quarterbacks I would take ahead of Purdy. Yes, because he is a fully adaptable transformer, but also because he is a great guy – the kind you would want your daughter to date.
For those reasons, I find myself rooting for Purdy more than any other NFL player. A similar magnetism envelops many of his offensive teammates, however. Christian McCaffrey is genuinely awesome – the rare bulldozing running back who also resurfaces continually as a deft receiver. George Kittle is similarly impressive – an imposing tight end with remarkable physicality and athleticism. Then there is a rotating cast of under-the-radar cogs that make the machine tick – Jake Tonges and Jauan Jennings, Brian Robinson Jr. and Kyle Juszczyk. San Francisco is incredibly well-built, and I endorse its modus operandi.
Critics will scoff at my naïve enthusiasm, of course. Purdy is regularly accused of being a ‘system quarterback’ who only excels in Shanahan’s celebrated scheme. Others derisively label him a ‘game manager’ who executes to a risk-averse script. The latter is laughably disproved by Purdy’s frequent sandbox ad-libs, while the former is – well – kinda the whole point of his job. To be branded a ‘system quarterback’ is, in my eyes, a compliment. And when the supporting infrastructure is sustainably excellent, as it is in San Francisco, that is a recipe for selfless, replicable success. That is a process you want to be part of.
Indeed, that infrastructure – that scheme, that system, that philosophy – allows the 49ers to weather so many storms. Typically, those storms are health-related, as San Francisco has lost more player games to injury than any other team in the Shanahan era. (2) To their credit, however, the 49ers’ seemingly nondescript pipeline consistently finds unheralded assets to fill the gaps. All-world linebacker Fred Warner has been passably imitated by Tatum Bethune, for example, while the loss of former NFL Defensive Player of the Year Nick Bosa has been softened somewhat by the emergence of rookie cornerback Upton Stout.
Just this season, Purdy has missed eight games; Kittle, six; Warner, eleven; and Bosa, fourteen. And while such absences are bathed in pathos, as Shanahan’s grand plan never gets a chance to bloom, the ‘Niners’ embrace of a ‘next man up’ mentality warrants praise. In fact, in its ability to transform retreads, undrafted afterthoughts and low-level draft picks into serviceable, functionary players that befit a winning scheme, Shanahan’s ethos is positively Belichickian. No spoke is too big for the wheel, and collective success comes before individual acclaim.
Naturally, whether it will all be enough remains to be seen. The Seattle loss put a big dent in the ‘Niners’ ambitions, while the scotch-taped defence figures to catch up with them at some point – despite the heroics of high-powered defensive coordinator Robert Saleh. BetMGM ranks San Francisco eleventh out of the 14 playoff teams, in terms of Super Bowl odds, but the sheer metronomic force of its offence makes a mockery of such predictions. (3) Especially in a postseason shorn of a Chiefs-style favourite.
Nevertheless, San Francisco has lost its last three trips to the Super Bowl – in 2013, 2020 and 2024 – inflecting its latent imperialism with fatalistic doubt. After winning four Super Bowls in the 1980s, back when my dad admired Montana, the 49ers last won it all in 1995, a few months after I was born. They have become specialists in heartbreak and masters of the near miss. And yet, to me, that makes them even more appealing – hunger complementing the glitz.
As such, I will be watching on Sunday night as the 49ers enter the raucous cauldron of Lincoln Financial Field in rabid Philadelphia. Watching and cheering, to be precise, with an emotional stake in the outcome. I will feel something, and actively participate in the drama, rather than passively gawping at its glassy façade. That, after all, is the point of sports, and I’m pleased to have rediscovered it.
Sources
1. ESPN. [Online] August 25, 2025. https://www.espn.co.uk/nfl/story/_/id/46043463/nfl-rank-2025-ranking-top-100-players-predictions-stats.
2. Fox Sports. [Online] https://www.reddit.com/r/49ers/comments/1ogva4f/a_league_leading_2036_games_missed_due_to_injury/.
3. Camenker, Jacob. USA Today. [Online] January 5, 2025. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2026/01/05/nfl-power-rankings-super-bowl-odds-playoffs/88023437007/.