This was the week to pack up.  It was kind of like going home from college after your freshman year, glad for the break from the long school year, but still looking forward to what next year might bring.

Tuesday was the end of the semester for the San Francisco 49ers. It was now time to mend. It was also a time to reflect. Behind the memories was the realization that some of your fraternity bros might graduate, some might transfer, and some might decide that this whole thing just might not be for them… whether by their own choice or that of the faculty.

The camaraderie built this year, the laughs, and the intangibles that made this team achieve way beyond what it rightfully should have will have to be rekindled. Maybe with a different cast of characters.

“Clean out your locker” day in 31 of the 32 NFL campuses is a melancholy event.

I’m guessing there might have been a tear or two shed when the 2025 version of the 49ers said goodbye. This was a team that exemplified the term, “next man up.” In fact, the organization thrived on it. If team togetherness wins games, then the 49ers would have been undefeated. At the end of this season there were guys stepping into the starting lineup who might be marginal starters in the NCAA college football playoffs.

I truly believe that Kyle Shanahan’s success was the envy of every other coach. Robert Saleh was so good on the defensive side of things, playing the only cards he had, that he earned himself another head coaching job in Tennessee.

Players who should have been learning at the knee of the master suddenly were plunged into battle while the master nursed a season-ending injury. In an ironic twist on an old adage, the backups had to run before they could walk. And, almost to the number, they did. Now the question is, how many run for the door? Or worse yet, are requested by management to take their new-found success elsewhere.

This was a team that somehow had the “it” factor.They was 53 guys who just found a way. They added new meaning to the term “over achievement.”  They had that evasive “ju-ju” intangible. They didn’t win it all, but they won more than they should have. What makes pack-up day the lump-in-the-throat event it could be is that the ju-ju gets packed up and shipped out with the shoulder pads and deodorant.

So what happens now?

There are roughly 70 bodies, plus coaches and support staff who occupy an NFL locker room from July until closing day. Even the occasional ink stained wretch or freshly coiffed TV person is sometimes allowed to sop up the ambience of this sacred place. And it changes every year.

Nobody really knows right now what the 2026 San Francisco 49ers will look like. I looked at the 70 names who made up the 53-man regular season and practice squad rosters and I thought 30 or so would be either hunkered down in another locker room, or applying for a job in the real world between now and opening day in September.

The on-field product will theoretically be better. After all, Nick Bosa will be 100% after an early season ACL, and Fred Warner seems already back from a gruesome ankle injury. Even 2025 first round draft pick Mykel Williams should start his second year healthy.

On the offensive side, Brock Purdy will now have a toe that’s the same size as his other nine for the first time in four months and Trent Williams should be back for his 17th NFL season.

But, who’s around to catch Purdy’s passes?  Is the offensive line up to the Rams and Seahawks standard? When does it happen that Christian McCaffery loses that one step that turns a 5 yard gain into a 20 yard gain? Did someone say it already has?  And, don’t expect to have more than George Kittle’s infectious persona around much when the team gathers again. He tore an achilles in the next to last game of the season and that’s almost universally agreed to be a year-long rehab.

Here are a few arbitrary takes born of several factors with which I have managed to eek out a meager career of sports pontification. My sources are impeccable. They feature a Ouija board, reading the Voice of the Fan postings on Tik-Tok, absorbing the football writings of the Maharishi Yoga, and auditing a class on how to be your own Nostradamus. So please, do not doubt me.

Brandon Aiyuk will turn down all offers from the few teams who dare so much as approach him and will wind up as a backup receiver for the Saskatchewan Roughriders. He will lead the CFL in rouges.

Gus Bradley will be the 49ers’ fifth defensive coordinator in five years and will remain so for the next quarter century.

Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch have been outspoken about not trading backup quarterback Mac Jones.

Mac Jones will be traded before the end of the 2026 draft.

The 49ers will proclaim their everlasting love for free agent wide receiver Jauan Jennings and then trade him because they won’t pay his asking price and he’s a distraction.

Kurtis Rourke, the brother of the BC Lions’ All-CFL quarterback Nathan Rourke, will be the 49ers’ backup quarterback and lead the team to five straight victories when Brock Purdy goes down after participating in the annual Toyota Truck Pull.

Jordan James will emerge as a valuable backup when Christian McCaffery is forced to leave a game in order to remove the helmet of a defensive tackle from his quadriceps.

In keeping with their theory of taking the best player available with their first round draft pick, the 49ers select Sacramento State punter Cal McGough of Geelong, Australia.

All right. Maybe I’ll reconsider my sources.

Barry Tompkins is a 40-year network television sportscaster and a San Francisco native. Email him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.