Merrith
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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The 49ers played in the super bowl 5 years ago. There are a bunch of teams that haven't sniffed a super bowl in a lot longer than that and there are 13 franchises that have never won a superbowl and 4 that have never even played in one. We have very little to complain about despite the fact that we've had a couple shitty streaks recently.
Nobody can build a good team in one year unless there are a lot of good building blocks already in place and there really wasn't much in SF. We had Bowman, Hyde, Trent Brown, Armstead, Buckner, Reid, Ward, Justin Smith, and not much else as far as players who could start on most NFL teams. That's not a lot to build from. They had a great draft but it just takes more than a year to build a competitive team from nothing.
I'll say that I haven't seen a team have a dominant stretch like the Niners did over those 3 years, then have it all crash down within 2-3 years where coach was gone, so much young talent retiring, etc. You see plenty of teams have a good year but don't maintain...others that hover at a level below what San Fran was doing those 3 years and not take the next step. But they were there, and they looked set up to stay there for awhile, until Harbaugh left/forced out and everyone just started retiring or screwing up their careers.