The San Francisco 49ers suffered a heartbreaking defeat last month in Super Bowl 58, narrowly missing out on securing the organization's sixth Vince Lombardi Trophy. For wide receiver Deebo Samuel, it marked his second Super Bowl appearance, having been part of the 2019 campaign that also ended in a Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
"Now, I've kind of put it behind me, about to get back in the lab here in a week," Samuel told Kay Adams on the "Up and Adams" show. "... Two in five years, it's pretty rough. Being right there, the two that we've been in, and just falling short, it's just so heartbreaking.
"But at the end of the day, you got to move on. And it's the next year, and we're just going to continue to grind and do what we set out to do."
Samuel acknowledges the difficulty of overcoming the loss. It represents the culmination of the team's efforts throughout the offseason, regular season, and playoffs—every player's goal is to win a championship.
"It's just like, all right, let's use this as motivation," Samuel continued. "When you get back in the lab, just to put yourself in a position and try to do your best to get back because people just say it's always the next year. But I heard that in 2019 and it took four more years to get where we at.
"It's not that easy, as people think, to get to the Super Bowl. It takes everything. It takes me, the coaches, the guys, the people upstairs, and to bring people in to help, and for everything just to play out right. It's just like you not going to snap your hands and you just back in the Super Bowl again. It's harder than people think."
Despite the setback, Samuel remains confident in the team's ability to rebound from the gut-wrenching defeat. He trusts the locker room, the coaching staff, and the organization's ethos.
"Because, I mean, if you look at it, we still got 90, 95 percent of the guys that's coming back, and I got all the faith in the world in this team that we have," Samuel remarked. "It's cool and all, four out of five NFC Championships, making two Super Bowls, that's all cool and fine and dandy, but it's not cool when you're not the team at the end of the year holding Lombardi."
Samuel concluded, "So everybody on this team has one goal and I hope we set out and we get it done."