Kurtenbach: For Kyle Shanahan and the 49ers, the 2024 season is a challenge unlike any they’ve faced

Reaching the Super Bowl is a monumental task.

Overcoming the lingering emotions of losing that game is an even greater challenge.

And that’s the challenge facing the 49ers, the most recent Super Bowl losers — in overtime, no less — this season.

While every 49ers player will carry the weight of lofty expectations — amplified by the all-too-real notion that this might be the final year for this team’s core as we know it — the most pressure to perform lies on the shoulders of the team’s head coach, Kyle Shanahan.

Shanahan is justly considered one of the finest coaches in the game, frequently described as a “genius.” At 44, when most head coaches are just landing their first top jobs, Shanahan has a legacy and lineage permeating the entire NFL. His influence is everywhere in this league.

And this will be the most demanding season of his career.

Since taking over a franchise in complete disarray in 2017, Shanahan has returned the Niners to their rightful spot in the highest levels of the NFL’s hierarchy. No, he hasn’t won the “big one” yet, but two NFC championships and four NFC Championship Games is a fate every team outside of Kansas City would gladly take.

The expectation for the 49ers is to return to the Super Bowl. They are the overwhelming betting favorites to represent their conference in New Orleans in February.

But expectations and reality have a funny way of misaligning in the NFL.

And it’s on Shanahan to put the uber-talented Niners in a tactical and emotional position to win.

Last season, the Eagles were 10-1 when they welcomed the 49ers to Philly 10 months after losing the Super Bowl. Despite having the NFL’s best record, the Eagles were reportedly “miserable.”

The Super Bowl hangover was real; it was just yet to be reflected in the standings.

Sure enough, San Francisco rattled off six straight touchdown drives, sending the already fragile Eagles into a tailspin that culminated in wholesale firings, front-page drama, and, ultimately, five losses in their final six games, ending with an embarrassing blowout in the first round of the playoffs.

Now, the 49ers are not the Eagles. The fissures that expanded to create such discord in the nation’s first capital don’t exist in the South Bay. Shanahan runs a tighter ship, the team’s leadership appears stronger and there is a major difference between the two markets in fan and media pressure.

That’s not to say the Niners are immune from whatever disease riddled the Eagles last season, though.

The odds might be in their favor on gambling websites, but they seem stacked against them in several key areas.

The first is that the Niners will have a massive target on their backs this season. The 49ers didn’t have the success they wanted last season, but they had more success than 30 other teams, leaving all but one gunning for them.

And as the reigning NFC West champs, the 49ers will play a first-place schedule: Games against Kansas City, Dallas, Green Bay, Buffalo, Miami and Detroit loom, all after mid-October.

That schedule also features the fifth-most miles traveled—despite not having an international game to play—and the league’s worst rest differential (a cumulative 21-day disadvantage when compared to their 17 opponents) in more than a decade, according to Sharp Football Analytics.

Maybe the NFL is gunning for the Niners, too.

The Niners’ core is also a year older. Playing 20 games last season—three in the no-holds-barred postseason — takes a physical toll beyond the norm. Of all the top NFC contenders this season, the Niners have the oldest roster, with an average age of 27. Among first-string players on a top-heavy roster, the Niners’ age is an even bigger factor.

The Niners were old last season, too, but they had the NFL’s fourth-best injury luck, according to Adjusted Games Lost, which factors in not just the number of players who missed games, but the quality of players injured.

Can Fortune favor them again in 2024? She didn’t the last time the Niners tried to return to the Super Bowl. Now, there was a lot going on in 2020, but the Niners’ incessant run of injuries resulted in a six-win, last-place season.

And while bodies can be trained, so can minds.

The mental aspects of this revenge tour are just as likely to determine the 49ers’ fate this time around.

Let’s be clear: It’s likely now or never for San Francisco. The organization has spent the last six months acting as if that’s the case, pushing all of its chips into the middle of the table for one last brilliant shot at a sixth Lombardi Trophy and first in 30 years.

But you can forgive the Niners — like so many Super Bowl losers before them — for only seeing the forest and not the trees this season.

That sure seemed to be the team’s vantage during training camp. Amid messy contract negations for star players Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams as well as the constant string of injuries, it was a languid summer for the Niners on the field.

Sleepy enough to make you wonder if this team is ready for the five-month grind ahead.

When only one outcome can be considered a success, it’s easy for a team to turn on each other when something — anything — knocks the team off-path.

We saw it with the Eagles last season, as we’ve seen it from plenty of other teams. (The 2015 Seahawks ring a bell.)

Again, the 49ers are wired differently than those teams. From my vantage point, there is more connection and better leadership with these Niners.

Will there be better coaching?

Shanahan’s job is to keep this team focused on the weekly tasks necessary to compete for titles.

It’s to weather the storms that will unquestionably come over the next few months.

It’s to treat this season, which is unlike any other, just like any other season, even if only one result will do.

It’s to finally put to rest the notion that this team — and its head coach — can’t win the big one.

That is no small task, even for a genius.

It’ll take a deft touch and thick skin; a relentless focus on the details while maintaining a big-picture understanding. It’ll take a roster littered with great players living up to their promise. It’ll take a whole lot of luck, too.

But these Niners have a shot — a better shot than most of their contemporaries and predecessors.

And now, the fun (or not so fun) part: seeing what Shanahan and Co. do with it.