A Super matchup
Can Richard Sherman and the 49ers’ defense slow down Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense?
Jimmy Garoppolo leads 49ers against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV today.
MIAMI — The 49ers adopted the slogan “Quest for Six” in the last decade. But the pursuit of a sixth Lombardi trophy for their glass case has been a long and meandering journey, lasting a quarter-century.
On Sunday, the mission might finally be fulfilled. The 49ers meet Kansas City in Super Bowl LIV. If the Chiefs win, they will lift their second Lombardi trophy. If the 49ers win, they will match New England and Pittsburgh as the teams with the most Super Bowl victories, at six.
For a long time — more than two decades during Eddie DeBartolo’s ownership — the quest for championships felt both like a birthright and a burden. The 49ers were expected to win the Super Bowl. They had established a dynasty. They had set an impossibly high standard.
The current ownership clings to the idea but has struggled to deliver.
“We always have one goal,” CEO Jed York said shortly before his team departed for Miami. “Any time you lower that expectation and hurt yourself, you hurt your team. You aim for it. You give yourself a chance to be great. That’s what you’re shooting for.”
Rather than feel the weight of the franchise’s history, like some 49ers previously have, this group is leaning into the past. Embracing it.
“I think it helps with the age I’m in,” coach Kyle Shanahan said. “I was born in ’79 so, growing up, I remember the Niners throughout the ’80s. I was here with my dad in ’94 when they won. I knew exactly how special it was.
“I think people from my generation, when they think of big-time teams, it was the Niners and Cowboys. The Yankees and the Red Sox. The Bulls and a little bit Celtics.”
Shanahan understands the history. He welcomes the legacy.
“We knew we had to build this up and get back here,” he said. “When you have a good organization, usually those tough times don’t last if you can just stay the course. And be a little bit patient.”
Patience has worn plenty thin at times. But, finally, after years of horrendous missteps and wrong turns, the franchise seems to be on the correct path. With a functional front office, a terrific coach and a vision that not only has paid off this year but seems sustainable.
It has been a revelation. It has been fresh. It has been fun.
In that way, this journey seems similar to that first 49ers championship team from 38 years ago. The surprise factor. The delicious unexpectedness of it all.
Of course, it’s not the same. Different era, different feel. That 1981 team united San Francisco, pulling the city and the Bay Area out of a dark decade of tragedy — Jonestown, the Moscone and Milk murders, the general malaise of the recessionrocked 1970s.
Fans didn’t wear officially licensed merchandise because there was no officially licensed merchandise. The only 49ers fashions I remember were some cheesy saloon-script T-shirts and some definitely officially unlicensed shirts that read “Forty F—in’ Niners,” favored by young men who lived in the outer Sunset.
Today’s 49ers are divorced in many ways from the city whose name they carry. Their forays 50 miles north of Santa Clara are rare, though the offensive linemen did make the annual pilgrimage to House of Prime Rib last week. Back in the old days, Joe Montana and Dwight Clark would turn up at bars in the “Triangle.” But you’re unlikely to find quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and tight end George Kittle hanging in the Mission.
The Super Bowl is also a vastly different experience than it was when the 49ers won their first in January 1982. Then, the Super Bowl was a skinny teenager, only 16 years old.
Now at 54 years old, it is bloated and swollen. The quaint days that Clark described in his charming San Francisco Chronicle “Super Bowl Diary” are so distant, the 49ers might as well have arrived in a horse and buggy at the Pontiac Silverdome. Those were the days of shared hotel rooms, unblocked room telephones that the public could access, meals at fast food restaurants, wandering around shopping malls unsupervised, getting asked a lot of questions on “Picture Day.”
The current 49ers have spent the week navigating the excess. But both they and their Kansas City counterparts have done it with good humor and patience.
“It’s been fun,” Garoppolo said with a smile. Once relegated to a table in the back room, as Tom Brady’s backup on the Patriots, he has spent the week on podiums, answering the same questions over and over again. He does it with such charm, that one of those repetitive questions has become, “Do you always smile so much?” “I guess I do,” he said. With a smile. These 49ers, modern professional athletes living in a social media world, are accustomed to a certain level of exposure and spotlight.
Unlike the 49ers teams of the 2000s, that at times bristled against the legacy they were supposed to uphold, this team is far enough removed to not feel its weight. The 49ers of Montana and Steve Young are so far in the past, they hold little direct relevance, and only historical reverence.
“It’s as impressive a past as any organization has,” Garoppolo said. “To be in that line of guys is an honor. I was too young to remember, but those guys set the standard for quarterbacks. Kap did a great job too. He made some big plays.”
Yes, Colin Kaepernick also led the 49ers to a Super Bowl. He’s been something of a forgotten man this week. Probably because the league prefers to ignore his accomplishments. But also, because there is less talk about the Super Bowl the 49ers didn’t win than the fifth one they won 25 years ago at the same stadium where they will play in on Sunday.
The elder statesman of the team, Richard Sherman, isn’t old enough to remember the last time the 49ers won a Super Bowl. He was only 6 years old.
“I was too young,” the cornerback said. “I remember the cast of characters. That was probably one of the most talented teams ever. But I don’t really remember watching them.”
This is a new cast of characters. Led by a general manager, John Lynch, who played in college for Bill Walsh. By a coach whose father, Mike Shanahan, orchestrated the offense that won the franchise’s last Super Bowl.
“If you’d told me I’d be here when I was in middle school, I would have said it is a dream come true,” said Kyle Shanahan, who wore a Deion Sanders 49ers jersey to school for six weeks straight.
There are threads to the past. But these 49ers are on their own journey, ready to create their own legacy.