The 49ers had a special season last year, one that nearly culminated in a Super Bowl win. This year? Not.
Speaking with reporters covering the Rams on Wednesday, Shanahan was asked whether the Super Bowl hangover is real, and what he thought of it entering the season.
“I think it’s frustrating,” Shanahan said, “I mean, just like you said, the Super Bowl hanging over, is just the big questions you’ve got to answer all the time and especially when you don’t have any offseason [program], so it kind of lingers even longer because I mean, the first time we came back after the Super Bowl was training camp. So it was kind of right there with the questions and stuff.
“But as far as going through it, I mean, it has no correlation with anything. We’re trying to figure out our team now and battle through a number of injuries and we’re trying to play better football. But to compare that to a year before anything, we have a different team this year. You have a different team every year and that’s something we’re working through. We’re not at our best right now and we’re trying to get there, but quickly once the season starts, once you get into a game, I feel the year before, it’s out of your mind completely. It might be a little bit different [for the Rams in 2019], maybe Sean [McVay] and their situation, because you come back in phase one and phase two and probably certain things you can address and work through. But by the time we came back, there’s nothing you can talk about. The season was here, so you move on and you go and try to have a better year this year and we’re not there, but we’re working on to turn that around.”
So it sounds like Shanahan wonders whether his team (or, more specifically, the members of his team who were on the team in 2019) had a chance to properly put the Super Bowl behind them before starting on a new campaign. Whether they did or not, 2020 came at the 49ers fast, with a Week One loss at home and a horrific Week Two trip to New Jersey that decimated the roster.
Now, the 49ers are 2-3 and embarking on a seven-game gauntlet from hell. They’ll finish the first half of their home schedule on Sunday night, and if they lose to the Rams, the 49ers will be 0-4 at home.
0-4 at home. After a 2019 season for the ages. That proves how hard it is to follow one special season with another. For the 49ers, they’re potentially following a season to always remember with one to forever forget.