Over the past five seasons, the San Francisco 49ers have appeared in four NFL Championship Games and two Super Bowls. The team represented the NFC in Super Bowl 58 last month, narrowly missing out on earning the organization's sixth Vince Lombardi Trophy.
CEO and soon-to-be principal owner Jed York refuses to feel ashamed of what the 49ers accomplished during its 2023 campaign, recognizing that the team is regarded by many as a model for building an organization. Few NFL franchises have enjoyed as much success in recent years.
"I just think you can't be ashamed of a successful season," York told reporters on Tuesday at the NFL owners meetings. "And our goal is always going to be to win Super Bowls, and even if we won the game, it's not like, 'Okay, well, we can take off 2024 because we won the Super Bowl in 2023.' Our goal is always going to be the same."
York believes he has come a long way since nearly breaking his wrist while punching a wall in 2018 after learning that then-starting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo had suffered a torn ACL early in that season.
"What I've learned in my time as CEO, it's not a complete failure to not win, where I had probably more of a you either win the Super Bowl or you 100 percent lose [mentality before]," York continued. "You can't not celebrate the fact that we've accomplished some really good things with this team.
"And I would trade a lot of good seasons for winning a Super Bowl, but we've collectively had a very successful program, and I want to make sure that we continue to do that. And the only way to win the Super Bowl [is] you have to get there first. And we've obviously been very close several times, and you have to keep building off of it."
York noted that some believe it's better not to make it that far than to finish in second place. Some even think it's almost worse to lose the Super Bowl than not to make the playoffs.
"And I don't think that's how teams should feel," York declared. "And as much as I would give just about anything to have won this game (Super Bowl 58) or four years ago against Kansas City (Super Bowl 54), you can't leave and say the whole season was a disgrace. It's not. It's a disappointment to not win, but you can't destroy yourself and destroy everything that you built because you didn't finish and hit your ultimate goal.
"That doesn't mean we're not going to work towards it and do everything that we can to continue to build this thing so we get back there and go win it in New Orleans this year. But that's my feeling about it."
York also reflected on an earlier Super Bowl defeat, before the arrival of head coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch. The Super Bowl 47 loss to the Baltimore Ravens under then-head coach Jim Harbaugh felt even more gut-wrenching.
"When I experienced the loss to Baltimore, I literally thought my life was going to end," York admitted. "The first time the 49ers ever lost a Super Bowl, and it's just this big, shameful thing. And then you take a step back, and it's like, 'We were number two.' If anybody else was number two, you'd keep working, but you would be proud of your accomplishments.
"And it's trying to figure out that balance of we always want to keep pushing, but you can't shame yourself for being second. But you're always going to keep working, and that's how I feel."