Kevin Szafraniec dissects the 49ers’ roster changes and offers a blueprint for finding fantasy value as San Francisco’s championship window narrows.
Fantasy championships aren’t won by chasing last year’s production – they’re secured by managers who understand how team-level changes create cascading effects throughout a roster. This exhaustive 32-team outlook series leverages our proprietary metrics and tools to identify these critical transitions before your leaguemates catch on.
The Shanahans are one of the preeminent coaching families in the NFL, with a tree of disciples spreading far and wide across the NFL landscape. Mike Shanahan made his name by winning two Super Bowls in Denver during his 14-year tenure as the Broncos’ head coach. The elder Shanahan then brought on his son, Kyle Shanahan, to be Washington’s offensive coordinator for four years from 2010 through 2013. Four short years later, Kyle Shanahan found himself leading a team of his own as the head coach of the 49ers.
Following two years of rebuilding, Shanahan led San Francisco to the Super Bowl in his third season but fell short to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs. The 49ers then made the playoffs in three of the next four seasons, ultimately reaching the Super Bowl again in 2023, yet falling short to Kansas City a second time. Then the wheels fell off in 2024, as the 49ers struggled through injury and ineffectiveness to finish with a 6-11 record and finish last in the NFC West.
This offseason, there have been plenty of changes to the 49ers’ roster, with the team sacrificing overall depth in order to pay their biggest stars. Does San Francisco have players on the roster with the skills necessary to step up and fill the vacancies left by their former teammates, or are the 49ers’ best days of the Shanahan era already behind them?
Don’t miss the other installments in our comprehensive 2025 Team Breakdown series:
- Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle Are Priced for the Darkest Timeline . . . That Might Still Be Optimistic
- 2025’s Most Dominant Fantasy Offense Is About to Go Nuclear: Why This Is Lamar Jackson’s Super Bowl Year and How to Exploit Baltimore’s Loaded Roster
An Outlier Season or a Sign of Things to Come?
Last season represented the second-worst finish of Kyle Shanahan’s eight years in San Francisco. The team faced a litany of injuries, particularly on the offensive side of the ball. While we should give Shanahan the benefit of the doubt that he will be able to right the ship, we should not consider it a given that San Francisco will reclaim their spot at the top of the conference, considering all of the moving pieces on the roster this offseason.
