Dieter Kurtenbach: The 49ers need to come clean on their real 2025 plan

Honesty is the best policy.

So the San Francisco 49ers should just come out and say it: they’re going for a dive in ’25.

Actions might speak louder than words, but setting expectations requires both.

It’s clear, though, from the Niners’ actions as the new league year begins that the team’s roster is not the only thing being reset.

Perhaps I’m the fool, but at least I wasn’t alone in being under the impression that the Niners would, yes, make some tough decisions in free agency, but otherwise would approach the 2025 season with the intent to win not only in the regular season but also in the playoffs.

That is not the case.

I had no problem with the 49ers letting Aaron Banks, Talanoa Hufanga, Dre Greenlaw, Jaylon Moore, and so many others walk out the door in recent days. Trading Deebo Samuel and cutting Leonard Floyd are moves that made sense in the short and long-term. The 49ers can argue that they have been justified in every move they have made so far in this free agency period.

But when you add them all up, it puts the Niners in an unjustifiable place.

You see, the 49ers are letting established players walk out the door, but they’re not bringing in any commensurate replacements.

While I am certain the idea is to rebuild through the draft (as if you’re never not building through the draft), the fact remains that as of Wednesday afternoon, the 49ers let nine starters leave this offseason and have — at the time of publishing — practically replaced one, maybe two, with slim pickins to replace the rest via free agency.

I can appreciate that the free agent market was absurd, with teams around the league taking the salary-cap bump windfall and spending lavishly on mid-tier players. It was justifiable for the Niners to sit out the first wave.

But to sit idly by during the second and third, what wave are we on now, anyway? That’s just being cheap and using the term “fiscally prudent” as a shield.

A perfect case study of the 49ers’ hapless project 2025 to date:

The team cut defensive end Leonard Floyd on Tuesday. Again, this in and of itself is a sane and rational thing to do.

But they’re yet to replace him, and the team’s top target to replace him, Joey Bosa, signed a one-year deal with the Bills Tuesday night.

The Niners reportedly made an eight-figure offer to Bosa — the lowest possible eight-figure offer you can make. And under the mandate from ownership to reign in spending and not overpay for players, that was as high as the Niners were willing to go.

Of course, there were several other bidders for Bosa, with Miami being one of them. But the Bills, who also desperately need a pass rusher, made Bosa the best offer — $12.6 million a year.

The 49ers refused to budge off a difference that represents less than one percent of the NFL’s salary cap.

I can understand being principled, but drawing hard lines in seller’s markets is a surefire way to end up empty-handed. Yesterday’s price is not today’s price, and the 49ers clearly underestimated how sticky inflation would be.

The truth is that there is no such thing as an overpay — there are just poorly informed cost expectations.

That leaves the Niners with the responsibility of resetting public expectations for 2025.

To be fair, the Niners have signed a few players. A few signings have been pretty deft, in fact. (That’s code for cheap and worthwhile.) They’ll undoubtedly sign some more.

But the team’s issue for the last few seasons has been a lack of middle-class players on their roster. They had a stars-and-scrubs team, and this offseason, they have actively made the decision not to pay some stars market value (again, justifiable in almost all cases) but to replace them — if they replaced them at all — not with middle-class players but rather low-cost, bottom-of-the-roster players.

The Niners are doubling down for a second straight offseason. Last year, they ignored the red flags and doubled down on their aging roster, hoping for another crack at the Super Bowl.

This year, they’re doubling down on six wins.

John Lynch and perhaps even Kyle Shanahan will hold a press conference — or two — before the NFL Draft, either to introduce the players they have signed or to discuss strategy before the college players are picked.

They should be joined at the dais — or in the video conference — by team CEO Jed York, whose policy of austerity has been a serious driver in an offseason fans are calling The Purge.

In that press conference, York, Lynch, Shanahan, or all three at the same time, should declare for the fan base that, yes, the team is punting the 2025 season with the goal of contending again in 2026 and beyond.

And then York should declare that no matter what happens in 2025 — whether the Niners earn the first pick in the 2026 draft or 26th — that Shanahan and Lynch’s jobs are safe.

Because, again, in a vacuum, it’s the smart move for the Niners to bottom out for 2025. They need to take their medicine for “running it back” in 2024, and it is a bitter pill to swallow.

But it sure doesn’t seem as if everyone is on board with that plan in Santa Clara. And that means external expectations will remain high for a team that went to three-straight NFC Championship Games before last season — a team with elite players on both sides of the ball.

If the Niners fail to reset expectations publicly and this team — starting who knows how many rookies and second-year players next year — isn’t contending for the playoffs, much less the Super Bowl, next winter who do you think they’re going to blame?

I’ll give you a hint, straight from York, circa 2017:

“You don’t dismiss owners.”

And that’s hardly fair to a head coach and general manager who are responsible for making expectations for this team so high.

We can all see where this is going, and it’s not worthwhile. It’s time for the Niners to get out in front of this. Otherwise, Lynch and Shanahan will be under it this time next year.

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