Some people are fans of the San Francisco 49ers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the San Francisco 49ers. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here.
Your team: San Francisco 49ers. Oh, did I say San Francisco 49ers? Because I meant Anodyne Exurban Strip Mall 9,000 Miles Away From San Francisco 49ers. San Francisco no longer has an NFL team. The Niners may as well have moved to fucking Alaska. Unless you’re a shitbag tech billionaire with a Learjet sharing app account, you’ll never see this team again.
Your 2015 record: 5-11. I have to say, that’s a good three or four more wins than I expected after this team cut Jim Harbaugh loose, dropped their roster into a garbage compactor, and hired a burlap inspector to coach for a full season.
Of course, Jim Tomsula was fired after all the bad things we knew would happen to this team DID, in fact, happen. I already miss him terribly. One season is such a brief encounter. I wanted three seasons of Hobo Whiskey making these faces on the sideline…
And farting in the press conference!
Oh, memories. Tell me it wasn’t worth losing 11 games to have your head coach openly fart out his dignity in front of a hot microphone. Jim Tomsula was the best show on television, and his bosses never realized it. SAD!
Anyway, now that the Lord Of The Highway Underpass is gone, your new coach is… HOOOOOOO BOY
Your coach: Oh, they went and did it.
I don’t think any coach in history has gone from genius to chump faster than Chip Kelly. Even Mike Martz had a short grace period before everyone realized he was a CFL coach in disguise. Chip discredited himself within a matter of minutes. He even ruined Christmas. What a fucking asshole. He’s like a savant cop on a bad TV show, teamed up with a straight arrow who has to explain his social awkwardness to everyone else. “Detective Farto has a… unique personality. But he’ll find your little girl, I swear it!”
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Chip Kelly is a perfect match for this fanbase because he has the fraudulent tech guru routine down pat. Here’s a guy who combines the gracelessness of Peter Thiel and the officiousness of Mark Zuckerberg with ideas that sound futuristic but are ultimately worthless. He was made for this job, people. You should thank God—God in this area being Jeff Fahey’s character at the end of The Lawnmower Man—that the Niners hired him, because they almost hired Mike Shanahan instead. I swear it’s true. Somehow that was the only other candidate. What is wrong with this franchise?
Your quarterback: Folks, we got ourselves a good ol’ fashioned training camp battle. In this corner, it’s the guy you benched and then forgot to trade away! Watch here as his confidence gets destroyed in real time!
And in the other corner, it’s YOOOOOOOOOOOOO GABBERT GABBERT! Watch him shred defenses with his nitro bazooka of an arm:
SIIIIIIICK, BRO. You can’t defend what you can’t see!
But wait! There’s a third candidate in this positional hellscape. Yes, it’s rookie Jeff Driskel. And if I know anything about Chip Kelly, it’s that he will make the most DISRUPTIVE, Wuerffel-esque choice at quarterback. See, it doesn’t matter if you’re “big” or “strong” or “have a good arm.” What matters most to Chip is: can you master his offense? Will you be able to look at that marshmallow on a sideline cue card and instantly glean its meaning? Will you allow your head coach to plant microchips inside your skull and then let him control you using a hidden joystick located in his jacket pocket? Will you shun huddles as if allergic to them? Will you blithely ignore triple coverage in order to take advantage of a three percent chance of completing the ball downfield in an ill-conceived attempt at intimidating defenses with your unpredictability? Are you comfortable with a coach who has zero interest in tailoring his style to your particular talents? THE JOB IS YOURS.
By the way, I can’t side idly by and watch Colin Kaepernick’s career get ground into horse meat like this. This poor bastard wanted to go to CLEVELAND this offseason. Do you understand how desperate you have to be to want to go there? Trent Baalke must force him to walk around in nipple clamps all day.
What’s new that sucks: This offseason, the franchise was determined to rid itself of all last vestiges of past success. That means that Anquan Boldin is gone, along with lineman Alex Boone and the bafflingly washed up Vernon Davis, who was traded to Denver in the middle of last season. There’s nothing left of the Harbaugh Niners. It’s all been doused and gasoline and burned. All that remains is bad turf.
Also, they drafted DeForest Buckner as a way of replacing the 26 good defenders they lost to retirement/drunk driving/wife-beating. Lotta shoes for that young man to fill.
What has always sucked: Everything. The fans are horrifically violent. The front office is a mysterious trainwreck. Dana Stubblefield was accused of assaulting a mentally handicapped woman. And do you know what the worst part of all this is? It’s only the beginning. This swift fall from the upper echelons of the league represents the opening salvo of the Jed York Era. York, who enjoys fucking over Girl Scouts and local waiters with equal abandon, has finally realized his master plan of lording over a shitty team that will make money forever. You have DECADES of this ahead of you, people. I don’t know that you’ve really come to terms with that yet.
This is exactly what San Francisco deserves. We’re talking about a city that has become America’s answer to Dubai…a place of unimaginable and conspicuous wealth, girded by shoddily hidden poverty and despair. It’s a city flooded with equal parts money and human feces, a city so expensive that the only people who can afford to live there are idiot Google doofuses who take the shuttle to work in the South Bay and never explore their own goddamn neighborhoods.
York, seen here auditioning for the role of Andrew Luck’s alcoholic cousin, is a perfect avatar for the city’s plight. He’s a spoiled little shitbag whose business acumen exists only in his imagination, presiding over a stadium whose technological innovations are vastly overstated, sucking money out of his hometown from a faraway compound. Everything about the Niners, especially their futility, is a gigantic Silicon Valley circle jerk.
Also, the Warriors blew a 3-1 lead. Remember that? I remember that.
What might not suck: Carlos Hyde! If you made Furiosa’s truck into a running back, occasional breakdowns included, you’d have this man.
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