Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n“And Trent, being 38 years old, it’s not fair to say,\u00a0oh, he’s going to be the rock of our offensive line. And so I think we’ve got the makings of a great offensive line.\u00a0Let’s make sure we continue to [build it]…\u00a0\u00a0And to me, that’s first [priority].”<\/p>\n
San Francisco has some decisions to make on the offensive line this year as starting left guard Ben Bartch and backup left guard Spencer Burford are both free agents this offseason while Williams and starting center Jake Brendel are both entering the final years of their deals.<\/p>\n
The 49ers need to make some moves to address the short and long-term needs in front of Purdy and the running backs.<\/p>\n
Speaking of the backs, Young also pointed out the need to upgrade the weapons that Purdy has around him.<\/p>\n
“I mean, if quarterback is the position in the NFL that needs to be prioritized,\u00a0then the offensive line needs to be the second.\u00a0And then you need speed,” Young said. “We don’t need speed as much as other squads because we have a lot of tactics.\u00a0But it can’t be the Christian McCaffrey show.\u00a0We know that.\u00a0That’s asking too much of Christian.\u00a0Way too much of Christian.\u00a0And I think it affects Christian’s running game. I don’t think we get the full measure of Christian as a runner\u00a0when he has to do six other things.<\/p>\n
“And so we’ve got to make sure that we develop threats out of the locker room\u00a0when they come warming up that that defense has been talking about since the last Wednesday.\u00a0Like, oh, watch out for [him]\u00a0Oh, crap. He’s bigger than I thought.\u00a0Oh, man, he’s faster than I [thought].\u00a0You know what I mean? I mean, that’s how the 49ers were for years when we were, you know, for the dynasty years,\u00a0the 80s, 90s, we were up 10-0 before we warmed up\u00a0because they’d been talking about us for five days.\u00a0You know, here comes Jerry Rice, and Jerry Rice walks up.\u00a0‘Oh, damn, he looks faster than I thought. Oh, John Taylor.\u00a0Holy crap. These guys are coming out of nowhere.’<\/p>\n
“And that’s what we had in 2023 when we warmed up, right?\u00a0We came out of the tunnel in 2023.\u00a0It’s like every guy is like, ‘Oh, crap.’\u00a0We’ve got to get back to that.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the 49ers stepped off the bus with McCaffrey, Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle and Jauan Jennings as their top weapons. This year’s roster lacked the talent needed to really take the offense to the next level.<\/p>\n
Whether it’s in a trade, free agency or the draft, San Francisco should try to get better players to get the most out of both Purdy and McCaffrey.<\/p>\n
More 49ers: 49ers predicted to take Trent Williams’ replacement in 2026 mock draft<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 23, 2026, 7:45 p.m. PT While there are still three games left to be played in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,95878,7,6,1161,252,2624,2623,96189,96190,95882,102119,96537,95946,97121,102120,97395,95896,95888,95895,95897,96090,95977,102121,95883,102118,97071,95881],"class_list":["post-700764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco-49ers","tag-49ers","tag-accessfree","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-sanfrancisco","tag-sanfrancisco49ers","tag-sstssportsnflniners","tag-sstsnniners","tag-tagamerican-football","tag-tagben-bartch","tag-tagbrock-purdy","tag-tagcalifornia-gold-rush","tag-tagchristian-mccaffrey","tag-tagjake-brendel","tag-tagjimmy-garoppolo","tag-tagnational-sports","tag-tagnfl","tag-tagnfl-hub","tag-tagoverall-negative","tag-tagsan-francisco-49ers","tag-tagseattle-seahawks","tag-tagspencer-burford","tag-tagsports-news","tag-tagsteve-young","tag-tagtrent-williams","tag-typestory"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700764","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=700764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}