The San Francisco 49ers took a different approach to free agency this past offseason, electing to shed veteran salaries and clear their books more, while also letting several players depart in free agency. In return, the 49ers didn\u2019t make any major splash signing, with Luke Farrell\u2019s three-year, $15.75 million contract being the biggest they handed out.<\/p>\n
The goal was to get younger and cheaper, while also having the cash to extend key players. So, the 49ers made all 11 of their draft selections, while extending Brock Purdy (five years, $265 million), George Kittle (four years, $76.4 million), and Fred Warner (three years, $63 million).<\/p>\n
They looked to replace the departures on defense via the draft, as they took players on that side of the ball with their first five picks in April. It looked like a bit of a transitional period for the 49ers, who still kept a number of blue-chip players but were also looking to develop younger pieces.<\/p>\n
Well, they had quite the season, despite losing Warner and Nick Bosa to season-ending injuries, winning 13 games, and making the NFC Divisional Round. Now, with core players getting one year older, will the 49ers look to spend more in free agency this offseason?<\/p>\n
At the team\u2019s end-of-year press conference, head coach Kyle Shanahan acknowledged that they did take a different approach last offseason because of their spending in previous years, which made the team\u2019s success even more impressive.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that is a broad question. Good one,\u201d head coach Kyle Shanahan said about the team potentially spending more in free agency. \u201cI mean, last year was a huge challenge. Salary cap-wise and what we\u2019ve gone for, for numbers of years, you can\u2019t do that every year. That\u2019s the way it\u2019s set up. And we had done that too many years in a row, so we had to make a decision to cut on money last year. That wasn\u2019t us being cheap or anything. We actually spend more, almost as much, or more than everybody. That\u2019s what you have to do in the cycle of how it\u2019s all based.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd more so than the injuries, that was the hardest thing to overcome is how many good players we had to let go out of this building that went and helped a lot of other teams. That\u2019s why when we did have significant injuries to some very good players, yeah it was more daunting than it was in year\u2019s past because some of the guys we would\u2019ve hung on, when you lose a guy like Fred or you lose a guy like Nick, those guys we lost because of free agency and stuff that we had to do because of the previous year. So yes, if you would\u2019ve told me that we lost those guys before the season with what we were going into, I wouldn\u2019t have expected us to have the record and stuff that we did.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, that\u2019s when you look at things as a whole and you try to give a narrative to a whole. We just prepare for a game each week. And there were very few Sundays that we felt by the time we got there that we didn\u2019t have a chance to win. And I thought we did play well. I thought our players grinded and overcame a ton of things this year and it gave us a chance to make the playoffs. I never sit there and say like, \u2018oh, this will be successful if we just get close to the playoffs or something like that.\u2019 I mean, we always expect to try to compete for the playoffs. We know some seasons are going to be harder than others, which we thought this would be. And I am proud to a degree of what we accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now, with the season over, the 49ers will re-evaluate where they are financially and look ahead to potentially spending more in free agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019m sitting here three days removed and having great perspective,\u201d Shanahan continued. \u201cOnce you get to that point, you believe you can get to the next point because you can\u2019t get that far if that isn\u2019t possible. So, we\u2019re really disappointed right now with how the season ended and still dealing with that. It\u2019ll get easier over the weeks and stuff. And then as we start to look into putting our coaching staff together, which obviously losing Robert [Saleh] and stuff, there are definitely some holes there that we\u2019ve got to replace.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then once you do that, then it\u2019s me catching up with John with where we\u2019re at financially, what we can do, what the options are, what\u2019s available in free agency, what\u2019s available in the draft, what helps you on this year, what helps you to the next year and all that stuff is connected. We\u2019re going to always try to do as well as we can to compete each year. But, some years are harder than others in terms of what you can do financially. And I know I\u2019m not there yet, but that\u2019s stuff that I\u2019ll be getting caught up from these guys over the next two months.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 49ers will have some money to work with in free agency, which can increase with restructures and other roster moves (plus however the Brandon Aiyuk situation will end up). So, they will be in a position spend and potentially add a difference-maker at a premium position (say, defensive line or even wide receiver?). But I\u2019d expect them to continue looking at adding younger players and getting more years out of their core, rather than getting stuck with bad contracts that lead to tougher financial situations in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Francisco 49ers took a different approach to free agency this past offseason, electing to shed veteran…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,7,6,1161,252,52067,1137,2624,2623],"class_list":{"0":"post-696920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-49ers","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","13":"tag-san-francisco-49ers-roster","14":"tag-san-francisco-49ers-news","15":"tag-sanfrancisco","16":"tag-sanfrancisco49ers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115940174424609450","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}