The longtime mantra of San Francisco 49ers fans, as well as the organization itself, might never have seemed more apropos, or necessary.
It can’t be easy, after all, to remain “49er Faithful” in the wake of the NFL team’s crushing 25–22, overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII Feb. 11 in Las Vegas.
After two Super Bowl losses and two NFC Championship Game defeats in the past five seasons, with blown 10-point leads being the common denominator in three of the four, the “Faithful” are being tested like never before.
Oh, the 49ers have endured their share of down seasons, and bleak stretches that lasted years, but it is something else again to stomach the agony of repeatedly falling just short of recapturing the franchise’s glory days that peaked in the 1980s.
“I don’t care how you lose. When you lose Super Bowls, especially ones you think you can pull off, it hurts,” San Franciso Coach Kyle Shanahan said during his post-game news conference. “But I think when you’re in the NFL, every team should hurt except for one at the end. We’ve gotten pretty damn close, but we haven’t pulled it off. We’re hurting right now.”
Mr. Shanahan is all too familiar with the feeling. He was coach of the 49ers when they saw a 10-point, fourth-quarter lead get away in a 31-20 Super Bowl loss to Kansas City four years ago. And he was the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator three years before that, when a 28-3, third-quarter advantage wasn’t enough to hold off quarterback Tom Brady and the New England Patriots in a 34–28, overtime loss in the Super Bowl.
And so it was again this year, when San Francisco scored the game’s first 10 points, and later regained the lead with a field goal on the first possession of overtime, only to see quarterback Patrick Mahomes lead the Chiefs down the field for the game-winning touchdown.
So now the team of legendary Coach Bill Walsh and all-time great quarterback Joe Montana, which won the first five times it appeared in a Super Bowl, has lost three in a row, including a 34–31 decision to the Baltimore Ravens to cap the 2012 season.
Instead of joining New England and the Pittsburgh Steelers with a record six Super Bowl championships, the 49ers are grouped with the Buffalo Bills, Minnesota Vikings, Denver Broncos, and Cincinnati Bengals as the only teams to lose in three successive title game appearances.
“We’ve been close so many times that there’s only so many more opportunities that we have,” star San Francisco defensive end Nick Bosa told reporters after the latest disappointment.
And therein lies the rub. As easy as it is for any team to look through disappointment with the belief that things will be different the following season, the cold, hard truth is that many who fall just short of a championship never get another opportunity.
The two most recent Super Bowl losers prior to this year, the Bengals and Philadelphia Eagles, haven’t been back.
“It’s hard to put yourself out there on the biggest stage in the world and come up short and have to deal with what comes with that,” 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk told reporters. “It’s not easy, but it’s something that we will never back away from and never back down from.”
Individual players, of course, will have to wrestle with their own personal off-season nightmares. Standout running back Christian McCaffrey, for example, rued his lost fumble that short-circuited a promising San Francisco series on the game’s initial possession.
“The first thing I think is I can’t put the ball on the ground on the first drive,” McCaffrey said during his post-game media session. “It’s going to sting.”
Late in the third quarter, a Kansas City punt glanced off the leg of 49ers rookie cornerback Darrell Luter and return man Ray-Ray McCloud was unable to recover the loose ball. The Chiefs immediately pounced on the critical turnover, scoring a go-ahead touchdown on the next play.
San Francisco responded with a touchdown of its own, only for rookie kicker Jake Moody to have his extra-point attempt blocked.
Had any one of those plays, or perhaps one of several others, gone another way, the 49ers might still be celebrating. The difference between winning and losing, between championship glory and devastating heartbreak, is often that fine.
Now it will be up to Mr. Shanahan and General Manager John Lynch to deal with impending salary-cap challenges and a roster that isn’t getting any younger as they attempt to put San Francisco back into position to snap a Super Bowl drought that is going on 30 years.
“The hardest thing is looking at the [former players], the Ronnie Lotts, the Steve Youngs, the Joe Montanas, when we haven’t done that,” Mr. Lynch told reporters. “Those guys have had our backs. We want to have theirs. If you want to be great, that’s what you have to do. You have to bust through.”
