The San Francisco 49ers want you to believe they’re using this offseason to reset the team’s books.
They’re getting younger, faster, leaner — you can insert any other cover-up corporate buzzword for “cheaper” here.
The 49ers’ selling point is that they’re following the Rams model. In 2023, LA decided to “reset” but made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons anyway.
But for every Rams success story a team thinks they can replicate, there are far more cautionary tales.
Take, for instance, the Dallas Cowboys.
Sure, the Rams took on $75 million in dead-cap money for the 2023 season and committed to solely replacing departing veterans with players on first contracts and draft picks, signing only nine players in free agency that offseason for a league-low total of $11 million.
Just do that, right?
But haven’t the Cowboys done more or less the same thing in recent years?
How’s that working out for them?
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Yes, the Cowboys—moneymakers and money savers—have been in the bottom 10 in annual free agent spending in each of the last nine seasons. They’ve been in the bottom five in the last three.
Good players, drafted and developed, exit, often under the auspices of age, and no one is brought in to replace them in the starting lineup. Some kid takes the job, and that’s a crapshoot. Yes, the Cowboys, like the 49ers, prefer to spend their money extending their own stars at top-of-the-market rates.
And for a while, this plan worked. In a division with the Giants and Commanders, the Cowboys have four playoff appearances the last eight seasons. They even won two playoff games.
Then, last year, the bottom fell out. The Cowboys’ defense fell to 31st in the league in points allowed, and the offense, without quarterback Dak Prescott for most of the season, was 21st in points scored. Somehow, they still won seven games. I think we were subjected to all of them on national TV.
The arrow is pointing down in D-Town. There’s little reason to expect things to improve for America’s Team in 2025. They lost a few more defensive starters to other teams, and they added no serious replacements in free agency (they did sign Solomon Thomas, though), perhaps because they’re concerned with how they’ll pay defensive end Micah Parsons.
The Cowboys are spinning it all as “getting younger.”
Is this way of managing a team ringing any bells?
Let me spell it out: The 49ers think they’re going the route of the Rams, but they’re really going the route of the Cowboys.
The reason is simple: track record.
The 49ers are all in on the NFL Draft now. Apparently, with the team’s 11 picks in April, they’ll be able to find at least competition for six starting spots on defense and two on offense.
That’s better than a 50-percent hit rate, with an exceptionally high bar for “hit,” at that.
That’s not going to happen.
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Last season the Niners hit on five of their eight draft picks. That’s as many as they had hit on, total, since the Trey Lance draft of 2021.
The 49ers are in their current cash-slashing predicament because they drafted poorly for a half-decade. Their last quality first-round draft pick before Ricky Pearsall was Nick Bosa.
It left the team with a stars-and-scrubs roster — no middle class of second and third-year players on the rise who could step up if the moment called for them.
And now the roster has fewer stars and even more scrubs. It wouldn’t garner a headline if most of their free-agent signings didn’t make the team in August.
The point of free agency isn’t to build a team; it’s to augment it. Merely filling a roster — much less filling starting jobs — through the draft isn’t a viable strategy if you want to be successful. The Niners might think the Rams did it in 2023, but no one drafts or develops better than the Rams. Every year is like the Niners’ one-off best.
That young Rams defense was built with two rookie pickups in 2020, 2021, and 2022 — in addition to two outstanding 2023 pickups. It also had Aaron Donald at defensive tackle and Raheem Morris as defensive coordinator. Yes, they were younger and cheaper, but they weren’t tossing a bunch of rookies into the mix and hoping it’d work. Being able to go young was the byproduct of consistently good work in the draft and in development.
And, by the way, all of that was just enough to be roughly league-average.
Those five winning 49ers rookies from last year? They were all starters last season.
That’s when the Niners did their “youth movement,” not now.
It only caused pain last year. So, if San Francisco wants to pursue that method, they’d be pursuing another six-win season.
Again, this team needs six new starters, minimum, and they have no inroads toward them besides starting proven non-starters or rookies.
It’s something Jerry Jones would do.
I guess it’s something Jed York wants, too.
