The 49ers’ old Super Bowl-or-bust mentality won’t work anymore, says Steve Young – NBC Sports Bay Area & California

Steve Young attended three of the 49ers’ Super Bowl titles, including one as the team’s starting quarterback.

As the 1994 NFL season began, the 49ers’ owners and management were unsettled. Coach George Seifert was in trouble and Young was under pressure to perform.

Winning the NFL MVP award was one thing, but it was considered meaningless if there was no Lombardi Trophy associated with it at the end of the season.

Those were the days when big changes would happen if the 49ers went without a Super Bowl win for a while.

Under immense pressure, the 49ers won the organization’s fifth Super Bowl following the 1994 season.

And now the 49ers have gone 30 seasons without a single win.

Young looks at the current 49ers team and believes there are many similarities to the teams of the ’80s and ’90s. He identifies superior coaching, a strong roster and the “spirit” of a championship team, he told NBC Sports Bay Area recently during the American Century Championship at Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course in South Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

“We have to think Super Bowl“And they are,” Young said in the latest “49ers Talk,” which debuted Sunday. “And if they fall short, you just grit your teeth, throw up in your mouth and spit it out, and we’ll do it again.”

“And they’re ready. The chances of them winning the Super Bowl this year are no less than they were last year.”

The 49ers have advanced to the NFC Championship Game in four of the last five seasons. They have played in the Super Bowl twice, and both times they blew their lead in the fourth quarter (or later) to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Under former owner Eddie DeBartolo and CEO Carmen Policy, such disappointments could lead to a scorched-earth approach. In seasons when Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh failed to deliver a championship, it often led to conflict and near-fireings or firings.

Those who remember the championship era may wonder if current coach Kyle Shanahan or general manager John Lynch face the same pressure to win the Super Bowl.

And Young acknowledged that in the past, people’s jobs could be at stake when so many near-misses occurred.

“That’s true,” Young said. “That’s true. But it’s also a different game. It’s hard to say, ‘Oh, let’s do it (like we did in the past).’ The game has completely changed with the rule changes for safety and personnel, and how we pay personnel and how we retain people and the salary cap for rookies. . . . “

As the 49ers enter a new season, there’s no indication that CEO Jed York is considering any changes at the top of the organization’s football structure if they’re forced to go another season without a Super Bowl.

After all, the 49ers are widely regarded as one of the best coaching-management combinations in the NFL. Shanahan and Lynch, who signed multi-year contracts in 2023, are widely considered the best in the league at their jobs.

“It’s a different paradigm,” Young said. “You can take some modeling and some things from the past, but don’t tell me that because they did it in the past, they should do it here. That to me is nonsense.”

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