Pro Football Focus isn't expecting the same kind of season in 2020 from the San Francisco 49ers as the one we saw this past season. The Kyle Shanahan-led squad followed up a four-win 2018 campaign with a division win, the best record in the conference, and a Super Bowl run that ended just short of its sixth-Vince-Lombardi-Trophy hopes.
PFF is expecting San Francisco to suffer a bit of a post-Super-Bowl-loss drop off in 2020.
Early 2020 season win totals were recently posted for those looking to place a bet and had the 49ers at 10.5 wins. That's two-and-a-half wins short of this past season's total.
PFF doesn't even envision San Francisco reaching that number. Data analyst Eric Eager sees the 49ers falling short of double-digit wins during the upcoming season, noting that San Francisco is in a very similar situation as the 2018 Los Angeles Rams. Sean McVay's team lost Super Bowl LIII and then failed to reach the playoffs this past season, finishing with a 9-7 record.
"[The 49ers] have a great, young offensive mind," writes Eager as he compares the team to the 2018 Rams, "a quarterback who is good but needs infrastructure to succeed and a defense that was among the league's best, especially up front."
So why does the PFF analyst believe the 49ers will go down a similar path as their division rivals?
"With Emmanuel Sanders, Arik Armstead and Jimmie Ward set to be free agents, and with only $13 million in cap space," explains Eager, "and a situation where the team likely needs to get better fundamentally just to stay the same, look for the 49ers to remain a good team in 2020 but, like the Rams, fall short of double-digit-win expectations against a schedule that includes non-NFC West opponents New England, Dallas, Buffalo, New Orleans, and Green Bay."
