The San Francisco 49ers seem to have clinched one title on Sunday, but it sure ain’t one they want. The Ringer czar Bill Simmons said on his eponymous and massively popular podcast that the 49ers have taken the mantle for his self-anointed “year from hell” rankings for the 2024 season. The proclamation was made after Sunday’s 28-18 loss to the Chiefs. “The Niners are not just our leaders for the year from hell. I think they’ve just about locked it down,” Simmons said to his co-host Sal “Cousin Sal” Iacono.
With the loss, the Niners are 3-4 and may be without wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. When you add that star running back Christian McCaffrey is still not on the field, Deebo Samuel missed most of Sunday’s game because of an illness and first-round pick Ricky Pearsall just returned Sunday from being shot in the chest in late August, the case for the 49ers seems pretty clear to Simmons. “If we’re looking for signs for the year from hell, maybe a guy getting randomly shot during a robbery right before the season who was a first-round pick is probably about as good of a sign as you can get,” Simmons said. Iacono quickly jumped in to add, “And that guy’s back before McCaffrey.”
The five-topic title of the episode had “The 49ers in Shambles” as the first item on the list, but Simmons and Iacono didn’t get around to discussing the Chiefs-49ers game until after talking about the MLB playoffs, the New York Jets losing to the Steelers and Simmons creating his “NFL teams you can cross off” list with a vigorous discussion. When they finally got to the spotlight game, Simmons and Iacono started with Chiefs praise and some discussion of Tom Brady’s improvement as a broadcaster before pivoting to the 49ers, with Simmons saying Brock Purdy’s three-interception effort will lead to a new wave of discourse against the quarterback. “That’ll be the game people point to and go, ‘This is what happens when your weapons suck,'” Simmons said.
Iacono then blamed himself for the bad Purdy game because, around three weeks ago, he said Purdy was very good. He also felt like Sunday’s loss was far more indicative of a larger issue. “The Niners needed this,” Iacono said. “I know they had injuries and everything, but if this is not an ‘F you’ game to the team that beat you in the Super Bowl on a questionable call at the end and everything else, when are they ever going to beat a team like this?” Simmons did end up couching his “year from hell” statement a bit, saying that he wasn’t “crossing off the Niners as a playoff team,” but now feels that San Francisco is not one of the top five teams in their own conference. He’s also concerned about just how difficult the 49ers schedule looks after their bye week. Before they get to that stretch, the 49ers will host the Cowboys on Sunday Night Football next week.
