Naturally, there are always potential disruptions. If the 49ers get hit with the same kind of injury wave that destroyed 2024, things almost certainly will get a little tense. Or if Purdy falters. Or if the 2025 defensive draft choices can’t fill the spots left open by the 49ers’ big spring purge of veterans.

The old joke around the NFL is that every administration is just a three-game losing streak away from jeopardy, and Shanahan and Lynch, this deep into their tenures, surely aren’t immune from that. Also, if Shanahan and Lynch ever start to split apart, that would be a sure sign of looming changes.

But Shanahan and Lynch remain as bonded as ever — in fact, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer reported that they were on a golf excursion together last week when the Purdy deal was getting finalized. The coach and GM are as fixed in place and joined together as any leadership duo in the league (that hasn’t won a Super Bowl).

Not that everything’s the same this season, of course. The offseason payroll cleansing has thinned out the 49ers’ depth chart in several key areas; there is no guarantee that all or even most of their recent draft choices can step into those voids. Even if the rookies look like they’re ready for significant NFL action right away, several of them could get hurt — as is normal for rookies — or other untested players could flounder in other ways.

We know that Shanahan and Lynch took an urgent flight out to visit Dre Greenlaw in Texas to try to salvage those negotiations but lost him just like they lost Talanoa Hufanga, Jaylon Moore, Charvarius Ward, and others. We know that there were solid reasons the 49ers discarded Deebo Samuel, Javon Hargrave, Leonard Floyd, Maliek Collins, and others, but also that all of them quickly found other NFL homes, because they still have value in this league. Just not enough value for the 49ers to want to pay them.

But I haven’t heard a whisper of public or private complaining from Shanahan and Lynch about the cuts to the middle of their roster. I don’t think they loved it, but they’re not muttering about it. Which gives us even more indication that things are OK inside the halls of 49ers HQ.

It’s no Pollyanna paradise. Even with this incredibly easy upcoming schedule, team officials know there will be issues. But the realism is part of the stability.

You can almost imagine York and his money people coming to a tacit understanding with Lynch and Shanahan at the start of this offseason. The 49ers obviously had a plan to dump a bunch of the veterans they believed were overpaid. But — so my theory goes — to get Shanahan and Lynch to sign off on the cuts, there might’ve been a promise to negotiate fairly and swiftly with the players who had earned new deals.

Nobody wanted a repeat of the prolonged Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams negotiations last summer or the Nick Bosa negotiations the year before that. So if this was all part of a plan to cut spending early in the offseason so they’d be freer and faster to spend later on … that’s very workable. The 49ers don’t have an elite roster in 2025, but they have a plan and a process.

Do the painful stuff early to clear the books, get money to the right players, avoid the stupid negotiating tricks, and give Shanahan and Lynch a full offseason and training camp to get the most out of this team. Which is how a mature leadership team leans on its own strengths and sets up another stage of this extremely extended era.