Your daily San Francisco 49ers news for Thursday, May 22nd, 2025
49ers QB Brock Purdy addresses the media after signing mega-deal
“Here’s everything he had to say.”
Kawakami: Jed York is going all-in with Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch one more time (paywall)
“You can almost imagine York and his money people coming to a tacit understanding with Lynch and Shanahan at the start of this offseason. The 49ers obviously had a plan to dump a bunch of the veterans they believed were overpaid. But — so my theory goes — to get Shanahan and Lynch to sign off on the cuts, there might’ve been a promise to negotiate fairly and swiftly with the players who had earned new deals.
Nobody wanted a repeat of the prolonged Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams negotiations last summer or the Nick Bosa negotiations the year before that. So if this was all part of a plan to cut spending early in the offseason so they’d be freer and faster to spend later on … that’s very workable. The 49ers don’t have an elite roster in 2025, but they have a plan and a process.
Do the painful stuff early to clear the books, get money to the right players, avoid the stupid negotiating tricks, and give Shanahan and Lynch a full offseason and training camp to get the most out of this team. Which is how a mature leadership team leans on its own strengths and sets up another stage of this extremely extended era.”
“The San Francisco 49ers have announced the finalized dates and times for their 2025 preseason schedule, which are listed below.”
Fred Warner’s extension reveals 49ers’ plan: A 2-year window to chase a Super Bowl (paywall)
“For now, Kittle and Warner are vital parts of what, thanks to an easy schedule, looks like a bounce-back season for the 49ers. They are the two undisputed leaders of each side of the roster thanks to the respect earned from hard practices and game-breaking plays on Sundays.
Both held up through a very trying 2024 season, with Warner playing the last 13 games with a fractured ankle. Last year’s offseason drama, with holdouts by Williams and Aiyuk, was followed by injury after injury, but neither Kittle nor Warner considered sitting out as the 49ers went 1-7 down the stretch. They loved football too much, and also didn’t feel comfortable with the notion of pushing teammates in practice and then opting out just because the team was depleted and losing games.
In many ways, last year may have been necessary for the 49ers to identify which players they wanted to reward and which ones they wanted to find younger models of. In addition to Kittle and Warner, Purdy stood up pretty well despite injuries to McCaffrey, both backup running backs, Williams, multiple guards, Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel.”