SANTA CLARA — On Friday, the 49ers will return to Las Vegas and Allegiant Stadium, the site of the team’s Super Bowl defeat six months ago.
The team’s third game of the preseason won’t mean anything in the grand scheme of the Niners’ 2024 season.
But amid the not-so-subtle reminders of what could have been that I am certain will come with being back at the scene of such disappointment, there will be a checkpoint of sorts for this season’s Niners:
Is this team good enough to repeat its success and take it one step further?
It’s a checkpoint that the 49ers will not reasonably pass if they do not have wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk and offensive tackle Trent Williams in tow in Las Vegas, contractually at least.
The time for tests and standoffs is over. I don’t know if the 49ers won or lost, but whatever gambit they are after needs to be executed post-haste.
It’s been said that absence makes the heart grow fonder.
In this case, it made two stars richer.
Amid countless conversations about Brock Purdy this offseason — the ever-present question of whether he’s actually good apparently makes for easy programming for national media — the Niners ran their quarterback out for 11 plays Sunday night.
Man, did he provide some good fodder for those national naysayers.
Yes, Purdy lacked the team’s top playmakers — Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey, and, of course, Aiyuk. But he was behind the offensive line that, sans Williams, would start if the regular season began next week.
Thank goodness for the Niners it does not.
I don’t know if Sunday was a practical joke or elaborate contract negotiation ploy with Purdy (who is due for a massive new contract after the 2024 season), but the 49ers’ “first-string” offense’s performance against a middling Saints defense was no laughing matter.
The wide receivers couldn’t separate. The offensive line blocked about half the time. And simply put, Purdy — the soon-to-be $60 million man — didn’t elevate the players around him. He went 2-of-6, for six yards passing with a should-have-been interception that proved to be the highlight of the game for him.
Part of the 49ers’ negotiations with Aiyuk and Williams has been the implicit stance that the team can do it without them.
That’s always been laughable, particularly when it pertains to Williams.
But now it’s downright undeniable.
No one is advocating for the 49ers to hand a blank check to both Aiyuk and Williams (though a seasoned debate can certainly be had with the latter), but we’ve reached the point where enough is enough.
The Niners have two practices remaining in training camp. After Friday’s preseason finale, the team will have a little more than two weeks before its season opener — a Monday Night Football game against the Jets on Sept. 9. The Niners will start preparing for the Jets as soon as this upcoming weekend.
Given how back-loaded the Niners’ schedule is, that Week 1 game is one that San Francisco really should win.
To do that, they need Aiyuk and Williams in uniform and playing well.
The runway needed to achieve such lofty goals might have already expired. Every day the 49ers don’t have Aiyuk and Williams practicing, the more in question their availability (and ability) in that Week 1 game.
Aiyuk has been effectively shadowing the Niners for weeks. His “hold-in” has kept him in team meetings. He was even at Levi’s Stadium Sunday, per Niners coach Kyle Shanahan.
And while the wide receiver’s neck and back (neck or back?) injuries are surely a tactic in his contract negotiations, the fact remains that no one — not even the Niners, I suspect — has any idea what kind of shape he’s in at the moment.
Is it the proverbial “football shape”?
And if not, is a little over two weeks enough to get back into it?
The Niners, of course, don’t have to sign Aiyuk to any new deal. He’s under contract for this season. They could simply cut off contract negotiations and tell Aiyuk that he’s playing on the fifth-year option of his current deal.
So far, it seems as if the negotiations have gone nowhere. If that’s, indeed, the case, San Francisco needs to call the receiver back to work — they’re well within their rights to do so.
But whether they give him the stick or the carrot, they need Aiyuk to practice before August ends.
The Niners have no such options with Williams.
The All-Pro tackle is in Houston and has reportedly taken up golf amid his hold-out. He’s made it clear that he will not play for the Niners until they make him the highest-paid offensive lineman in the NFL. That means a raise of at least $5.2 million for this season alone. (Less is known about Williams’ future-season contract demands.)
The tackle obviously has very little in common with the common man, but as someone who has played a lot of golf in Missouri in the summer and effectively sweat out more than 100 pounds in the process, I have to wonder if Williams — who is playing golf in a place that is barely habitable in the summer — will be “Ready For Some Football” if he signs a new contract mere days before Monday Night Football.
We saw how waiting until the last minute didn’t work for the 49ers or Nick Bosa last season. (Football-wise, at least — it worked out splendidly for Bosa, fiscally.)
If the Niners get these two deals done this Monday, there’s likely enough time. They’ll be able to go into Friday’s game with the Raiders with big David Lee energy.
Full Squad, baby.
Not for that game, of course, but for the game that matters.
But if the Niners continue to let these two issues linger — if they cannot get done what they had six months to do — they’re setting themselves up for early failure.
And early failure could easily kneecap all those lofty goals for this season. The parity-mad NFL isn’t kind to successful teams. The sport, at this level, treats teams that mess around even worse.
Time’s up, Niners. Get Aiyuk and Williams back at work.