Inman: 49ers’ face daunting path to next season’s Super Bowl

SANTA CLARA – Brock Purdy and the 49ers’ offense debuted this season at their own 5-yard line. Seattle’s home crowd let out a menacing roar. Up ahead was a Seahawks defense that eventually would key a Super Bowl charge.

But the 49ers, on that Sept. 7 afternoon, hogged and moved the ball on a 95-yard opening drive, sealed with a touchdown pass from Purdy to George Kittle.

It was not a harbinger of doom for the Seahawks.

“They had a great opening drive and it was a battle back-and-forth all game,” defensive lineman Leonard Williams recalled this past week. “But after that game, we knew the type of team we had and it felt special. It helped us focus and lock in the rest of the season.”

That season ends Sunday for them on their rival 49ers’ home field, where their Super Bowl LX opponent is the AFC-champion New England Patriots.

While the injury-depleted and short-staffed 49ers came up two wins short of a home Super Bowl, they’ll surely be in contention next season, if they can navigate an ever-daunting NFC West.

“The division is only going to get better,” Seahawks defensive tackle Jarron Reed said. “Our division is the hardest in football, period. We had three teams in the playoffs. All those guys are great teams.”

The Seahawks’ final measure of greatness could come in the form of a Lombardi Trophy at Levi’s Stadium, a month after they were smoking victory cigars in the visitors’ locker room for clinching the NFC playoffs’ top seed with a 13-3 win over the 49ers in the regular-season finale.

Seattle, thus, got a wild-card bye before ousting the 49ers 41-6 in the divisional round and then the Los Angeles Rams 31-27 in the NFC Championship Game.

“This has been an amazing division this year, and it’s kind of crazy, the only teams we’ve played the past month are the Niners and the Rams,” Williams said.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who had an NFL-best 1,793 receiving yards for the Seahawks, took a slight break in Super Bowl preparations to size up the Seahawks’ NFC title defense next season.

“It’s going to be very challenging, very challenging,” Smith-Njigba said. “Matthew Stafford and those guys are no joke. Brock Purdy and those guys are no joke. It’s competitive. Arizona, they’re on the up and up, and they can only get better, honestly. You just have to be ready and prepared.”

And so the 49ers are indeed preparing. They must, one, get their superstars healthy, and, two, get ready for another tug-of-war in the NFL’s most daunting division. Free agency starts in five weeks and the 49ers’ first draft pick is at No. 27 overall on April 23.

After Robert Saleh left last month to coach the Tennessee Titans, coach Kyle Shanahan found a successor in long-time ally Raheem Morris, who’ll be the 49ers’ fifth defensive coordinator in five years.

Overall, former coach Steve Mariucci said the 49ers are “on track, they’re right there. They just have to stay healthy.”

While several key players are already months into their rehabilitation from serious injuries – Nick Bosa, Fred Warner and Mykel Williams – their offensive catalyst sounds surprisingly refreshed only a few weeks after the season. Christian McCaffrey, who led the NFL with 413 touches in the regular season plus 37 more in the playoffs.

“I feel great,” McCaffrey said before this week’s Pro Bowl flag-football game — and before Thursday’s NFL Honors show, where he picked up the AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year title and the NFL’s Salute to Service Award by USAA.

Instead of requiring offseason surgery to fix a turf-toe injury that hindered him the first half of last season, Purdy is looking spry, and he’s looking ahead to next season, with encouragement coming from how the 49ers persevered to a 12-5 regular season and a wild-card upset at Philadelphia.

“With the injuries we were dealt with, the situation and everything, like, yeah, it was tough,” Purdy said. “But I’m really proud of a bunch of guys stepping up. Young guys, older guys, you name it. Having new guys come in like Eric Kendricks late in the year.

“For us to be able to win the way we did as a team was pretty special,” Purdy added. “But the ultimate goal is to win the whole thing, and we’ve got work to do.”

Purdy’s offensive cast could be entering a critical season as players and contracts age. Defensively, even after last year’s overhaul, the construction zone remains.

“Improving their secondary, adding a couple of guys here and there,” Mariucci said of the 49ers’ needs. “They’ve got pass rushers, when they’re healthy. Because they have good quarterbacks in that division. Matthew Stafford can sling it like anybody, and here comes Sam Darnold, and I don’t know what Kyler Murray is going to do.”

Darnold and Seattle lost their first regular-season meetings with the 49ers and the Rams this season before rounding into NFC-championship form.

The 49ers didn’t clinch their 17-13 season-opening win in Seattle until Nick Bosa forced and recovered a strip-sack fumble in the final minute. The Seahawks’ defense hasn’t forgotten how its first series evolved, over 14 plays, 95 yards and 8 ½ minutes.

“What I remember from that drive was guys on our defense flying around,” said Williams, whose roughing-the-passer penalty on third-and-9 incompletion vaulted the 49ers to the Seattle 24-yard line. “That ticky-tack call on me was because I was flying to the ball. I was hustling. I was playing to the whistle. He had let the ball go and I hit him.

“That’s the style we played with all year and it started Week 1.”

That drive ended with Kittle making a touchdown catch near the front right pylon after beating the coverage of safety Ty Okada, who was filling in for injured rookie Nick Emmanwori.

“Obviously we didn’t finish that drive the way we wanted to, but ultimately leaving that drive and leaving that game, we were thinking, ‘OK, we like what we put on film. There were some things that were correctable,’ ” Okada said. “The energy and effort we played with, we left that game thinking, ‘We can work with this. This is good.’ ”

Those good vibes haven’t stopped.

Seahawks tight end Eric Saubert, who defected a year ago from the 49ers in free agency, signed a one-year extension last month to stay in Seattle – and the NFC West.

“We talk about it. This division is a beast. It’s pretty cool,” Saubert said. “You’re playing such competitive games all the time. We thrive in that kind of environment and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Going against Warner, Bosa, (the Rams’ Jared) Verse and (Byron) Young, it’s a beast but it’s awesome,” Saubert continued. “It’s such a high level of football. You better be on your stuff or you’re going to get exposed in this division.”

Seahawks linebacker Ernest Jones IV, who excelled on the 2021-23 Rams, knows what awaits in next season’s divisional matchup.

“The NFC West, since I’ve gotten in the league, when those teams are popping, it’s the baddest division in the NFL,” Jones said. “To have the success we had this year, and to be coming back, it’s going to be wild again, I’m sure of it.”