SANTA CLARA — After a training camp marked by a holdout, a hold-in and a near-tragedy, the 49ers got down to the business of football Monday night against the New York Jets.
Turns out they’re still pretty good at it.
The 49ers won 32-19, but it was more convincing than that in a physical sense. It didn’t have the “wow” factor of last season’s 30-7 road win in Week 1 against the Pittsburgh Steelers where the 49ers made it clear they were a cut above, but it was impressive nonetheless.
Apparently all the outside noise about missed practices and protracted contract issues with Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams were just that.
Noise.
In a completely separate real-life situation, rookie first-round draft pick Ricky Pearsall Jr. was shot through the chest on Sept. 1 yet could miraculously miss only four games.
With all this as backdrop, the 49ers went boa constrictor against the Jets, choking the life out of an opponent that had Aaron Rodgers at quarterback and a supposedly formidable defense that wound up getting trampled even with Christian McCaffrey on the sidelines with a calf/Achilles injury.
To fullback Kyle Juszczyk, there’s still nothing finer than being a 49er.
“It’s so funny. The whole training camp, the reports about how the vibes were so terrible here,” Juszczyk said. “It couldn’t be further from the truth.”
It wasn’t anywhere close to perfect. No 49ers team would ever be satisfied with settling for six field goals, as they did from Jake Moody. But they won big anyway even with McCaffrey, the reigning NFL Offensive Player of the Year, sitting it out. Aiyuk played 43 of 72 snaps, caught just two passes for 28 yards and dropped a sure touchdown from quarterback Brock Purdy. Williams, the Hall of Fame-bound left tackle, had the same number of IVs (two) as missed snaps (two).
Yet there was no doubt which was the superior team, with Jets coach and former 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh citing “championship-level football.” There are questions as to whether the Jets will get there, even with Rodgers at quarterback. The 49ers are positioned to make another run at it after being in the conference championship game four of the last five years with a pair of painful Super Bowl losses.
Continuity is rare in the NFL, but coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch are going into their eighth season. The Aiyuk contract dispute was a constant thorn. Williams, an even more impactful player, kept to himself but it was still a dark cloud. And McCaffrey’s injury appears worse than the 49ers ever let on, based on his inactive status against the Jets.
Shanahan is big into the importance of practice, and Aiyuk and Williams got four sessions each. That’s it.
No matter. Quarterback Brock Purdy (19 of 29, 231 yards) was his usual efficient self. Had Aiyuk not dropped a touchdown pass in the end zone, his passer rating would have gone from a pedestrian 89.9 to an elite 106.0. Purdy didn’t turn the ball over.
Defensively, other than one early drive when the 49ers could cover Garrett Wilson and Rodgers took advantage, the Jets did almost nothing until the game was already decided against an aggressive, wide-ranging defense.
Shanahan did what good coaches do. He played to the strengths he had Monday night, rather than some wide-ranging concept of what his offense would be in the future. With McCaffrey out, Deebo Samuel got some snaps in the backfield in a 2021 flashback. The 49ers ran the ball 47 times and had a 38:40-to-21:20 advantage in time of possession.
At least Jordan Mason, a training camp standout, was there to back up Shanahan’s belief in practice. In McCaffrey’s absence, Mason ran the ball 28 times for 147 yards and a touchdown.
Culture may be one of the most overused terms in sports, the NFL in particular. But when the veteran core believes it and teaches it to younger players, it becomes legit more than cliche.
Williams sat out all of training camp until last week. It was clear his teammates hadn’t been chewing their fingernails, awaiting his arrival. Not when there was business at hand.
“I walked in and I was like, ‘Damn, everyone is laser-focused, flying around,’ ” Williams said. “Not a lot of joking going on. We’ve got a lot of new players that are already playing at the level we expect around here . . . we had a good roster last year. I didn’t know how they could improve it, but in my opinion we improved and those (new) guys are playing their butts off.”
It’s not like Shanahan was spending a lot of his time worrying about anything other than each day at practice.
“I’m with our team every day, so I know there’s lots of news stories and stuff about holdouts and things like that and when people are coming back,” Shanahan said. “Our guys have been awesome in practice. They’ve been very focused.”
Purdy, for his part, is becoming more comfortable as a leader for the franchise that selected him at the end of the 2022 NFL Draft and has him on the verge of untold riches.
“Yeah, I think it’s good for us,” Purdy said. “We’ve been through a lot as a team, just with signing guys, trying to get guys back, Ricky’s situation and Christian . . . it’s the NFL. Some crazy stuff can go on, but just our culture, our team, what we stand for is how we all come together and find ways to win and rally around each other.”
What was supposed to be a day of reckoning and the validation of all the concerns fans and media had about the 49ers was turned on its head over the course of one Monday night.
What went mostly unnoticed beyond Aiyuk and Williams was that their absences were greeted with a collective shrug from the rest of the team, citing business as usual. And those in the building were going about their business.
Bosa, for instance, was an offseason participant at Shanahan’s behest and leading by example in terms of intensity and work ethic.
“You really have no choice when you come into this building to not play with great effort and play Niner football,” defensive end Nick Bosa said. “I think tonight was the epitome of the Niner way.”