49ers, Raiders took divergent paths to miserable point
To mangle a quote from Leo Tolstoy:
“All winning NFL teams are alike; each losing NFL team is a loser in its own way.”
That’s our lesson for this week. How did the Bay Area’s mega-losing NFL teams (combined record 2-13) become such mega-losers? Each took a different path.
Remember it was a mere 50 days ago when optimism reigned. The motto of the season was “JG excitement”: Jon Gruden in the East Bay and Jimmy Garoppolo in Santa Clara. Thursday’s game was supposed to be an exciting matchup for local supremacy.
Fast forward to today: Northern California is home to the two worst teams in the NFL. Embarrassing products, which will be on exhibit for the nation. A struggle in humiliation.
The Raiders and the 49ers have taken different roads to abject failure.
The 49ers have been wretched for four years — since the
knives were out for Jim Harbaugh in the middle of the 2014 season. But the bigger picture is far more depressing: They’ve been basically a train wreck since 2003, with the exception of three years under Harbaugh. That’s 13 out of the past 16 years of pure futility.
Post-Harbaugh, Jed York wedded himself to the wrong alpha male in general manager Trent Baalke. Baalke made a long series of bad draft decisions, and the talent that had been accrued mainly by former general manager Scot McCloughan drained away. The York family brain trust made a series of laughable coaching decisions both preand post-Harbaugh.
In February 2017, general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan arrived. They were given six-year contracts and patience was the theme. This was clearly a major rebuild.
That patience already is wearing thin. And though there’s no chance that Shanahan and Lynch are in trouble — yet — it is perfectly understandable to see where the anger is coming from.
On the personnel side, the rebuild, orchestrated by Lynch and Shanahan, isn’t going well. The top four draft picks from the 2017 draft — once hailed as brilliant — all seem to have gone backward in their development: Solomon Thomas, Reuben Foster, Ahkello Witherspoon and C.J. Beathard. The jury is still out on most of the other draft picks, aside from tight end George Kittle. Sure, the team absorbed an enormous blow when Garoppolo went down with a knee injury, but this team clearly isn’t good enough to win even with a solid quarterback.
The way the team is losing has created valid questions about Shanahan’s coaching, about his choice of the coaching staff, about the development of players, about game-time decisions. The inability to close out several close games and not learn from it is a sign of some kind of stagnation and dysfunction.
One thing we do know about the 49ers: The Bay Area is saddled with them.
Not true of the inept Raiders. To steal a line from a Twitter follower, aren’t you supposed to look like a complete embarrassment when you’re leaving Las Vegas, not when you’re sitting at the departure gate ready to board your flight there?
The Raiders have one foot out the door, but their die-hard fans expected some excitement before they leave Oakland. After all, the team already did a complete teardown just a few years ago. And the rebuild seemed to be working: In February 2017, the Raiders were an early favorite to be in the Super Bowl mix.
They had a solid young quarterback who had been mentioned as an MVP candidate in 2016, and who had taken his team to the playoffs before being felled by a broken leg. Derek Carr had a young receiver named Amari Cooper, who looked like he could be among the league’s best. And Carr was protected by what was considered at the time one of the league’s best offensive lines.
The Raiders also had the best young defensive player in the league. Khalil Mack, just 25 at the time, was the league’s Defensive Player of the Year.
Quarterback talent? Check. Pass-rush talent? Check. Offensive line and other supporting elements? Check. Those are the cornerstones of a winning team. When the team faded badly in 2017, it was thought to be a function of stagnant development. Maybe of coaching.
So Mark Davis made a change, the only one he had ever wanted to make. He finally lured Gruden, of Raiders’ royalty, back to the sideline. New king Gruden was given the control and promised big things. Patience was not the theme in Raider Nation.
Gruden quickly started to remake the team. He lost a game of chicken with Mack, which made no sense. The players were sent the clear message that no one was safe, that this is a rebuilding year and that all that talk about contending was to be shelved.
In recent weeks, the team has appeared dysfunctional. Lifeless in London, then awash with leaked anonymous stories hinting at fissures between Carr and his teammates and players and Gruden. The team repeatedly has collapsed late in games. Their only win came against the Browns, who fired head coach Hue Jackson on Monday.
The 49ers and Raiders have taken different paths to misery — but they’ve reached the same destination. Their combined 2-13 record will be the worst combined winning percentage (.133) in the 785 prime-time NFL games played after Halloween.
“This is going to fun for the fans and fun for both teams,” Gruden said Monday.
Really? From here, it promises to be a three-hour exercise in dysfunction. Ann Killion is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: akillion@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annkillion