The 49ers went cheap this year. It handed the Seahawks a Super Bowl.

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Head coach Mike Macdonald and Kenneth Walker III of the Seattle Seahawks celebrate with the Vince Lombardi Trophy after winning Super Bowl 60 against the New England Patriots at Levi's Stadium on Feb. 8, 2026, in Santa Clara, Calif. (Chris Graythen/Getty Images)


When the Seattle Seahawks defeated the San Francisco 49ers in the 2013 NFC Championship Game and won Super Bowl 48, at least they hoisted the Lombardi Trophy at a location that wasn't the 49ers' home field.

The Legion of Boom Seahawks overtaking the Jim Harbaugh-era 49ers, while painful, at least had a feeling of inevitability to it. Frank Gore, Patrick Willis, Justin Smith and others were clearly aging, and Colin Kaepernick's regression made it obvious that the 49ers of that era had an expiration date. Also, the early-2010s Seahawks were absolutely loaded on both sides of the ball - so much so that even Seahawks fans lament they won only one Super Bowl (thank you, Malcolm Butler).

There was nothing inevitable about the Seahawks eclipsing the 49ers in 2025. And there are no "at leasts" here. This was a winnable Super Bowl, and the 49ers, while injury ravaged, could have given the Seahawks a better game in the playoffs if the team, under owner Jed York, had not undergone a cash spending purge in the 2025 offseason.

To this day, no one is really sure why the team's cash spending suddenly went down. General manager John Lynch has spoken vaguely of needing a financial "reset," and fullback Kyle Juszczyk said the team had "financial restrictions." None of this is actually true in terms of salary cap space, though. The team had around $35 million in cap space going into free agency after the Deebo Samuel trade. And the Brock Purdy extension was structured to provide only a $9.12 million cap hit in 2025. By season's end, the team's $20.1 million in cap space was the seventh most in the entire NFL.

The salary cap is manipulable year over year if ownership is willing to spend on upfront cash. Muchink has been spilled on this topic, and there is no amount of billionaire owner hand-waving that distracts from this cold, hard fact. There is always money to be spent on improving a roster, and York, who has been aggressive in much of his 49ers tenure, decided that 2025 was the year his pocketbook just hurt too much.

York, after making this choice, has done plenty of hand-waving. He stated in April of last year, "I don't know that as we looked at the [free agency] board, that there was somebody that we felt would make an impact more so than making the decision to go pay Brock."

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San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York speaks during a media conference after Super Bowl 60 on Feb. 9, 2026, at Moscone Center in San Francisco. (Matthew Huang/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)


Again, it is a completely false premise that the 49ers had to choose between paying Purdy and spending on the rest of the roster. Even after the Purdy signing, the team had more than $24 million in cap space, and the largest contract the team gave out in 2025 was to backup tight end and serial loser of the football Luke Farrell for three years at $20.5 million. And further illustrating that cash spending does not equate to cap spending, the Farrell contract had a cap hit of less than $3 million for 2025.

There were many 2025 free agents and 49ers departees who could have helped San Francisco beat a flawed Seattle team in 2025. Yes, this Seattle team was flawed. Everyone who watched Sunday's Super Bowl knows this was not the 2013 juggernaut, and an AFC team whose best offensive playmaker wasn't one of Drake "The Schedule" Maye and Stefon "washed up and allegedly chokes personal chefs" Diggs could have won that game.

We'll start with the players the 49ers cut so Jed York could save some money this year. Maliek Collins had 6.5 sacks for the Cleveland Browns, and while he isn't the best run defender in the world, the 2025 49ers struggled to generate any pressure against opposing quarterbacks on third down. Collins' sack total would have eclipsed those of 49ers team leaders Bryce Huff and midseason acquisition Clelin Ferrell, who were tied with four apiece. Meanwhile, Leonard Floyd had 3.5 sacks for the Atlanta Falcons this season and, unlike Ferrell, can actually defend the run and could have helped the broader run defense after Mykel Williams tore his ACL.

As for 2025 free agents? The 49ers were linked to Joey Bosa in the offseason, and while he had a modest sack total of five this year, Bosa still would have led the team in sacks after his younger brother went down with an ACL tear in September. Then there's DeMarcus Lawrence, who signed an even cheaper contract than did the elder Bosa with, guess who, the Seattle Seahawks. Lawrence recorded six sacks and helped turn that defense into one that could win a Super Bowl with minimal contributions from its offense.

On the other side of the ball, the 49ers were linked to center Drew Dalman, who made the Pro Bowl with the Chicago Bears while the 49ers posted one of the worst rushing attacks in terms of yards per carry and efficiency in the Kyle Shanahan era. As a guest analyst for NBC before the Super Bowl, Shanahan himself stated that the only way to break Seattle out of its two-high safety look is to run the ball effectively, something he lamented not being able to do in his last two games against them.

As far as throwing the ball goes, the 49ers knew they would be down Brandon Aiyuk at the start of the season and talked to Davante Adams, but Adams told the Athletic the 49ers were too cheap to match the Los Angeles Rams' offer. That one in particular stings after the 49ers' receivers could not separate in either game against the Seahawks in January.

This Seahawks team is good, but it was beatable. Hell, the 49ers did it in Week 1 before the injury plague kicked in. They could have done it again in January if their owner didn't inexplicably pull back on cash spending. And in 2026, York has now put himself in a situation where he will have to spend. As was true in 2014 and beyond, this Seahawks roster is clearly better than the 49ers roster.

But unlike 2014, the talent gap between the two teams was not inevitable. It was a choice of Jed York's making, and he got to watch the Seahawks win a Super Bowl on his own field as a result.

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This article originally published at The 49ers went cheap this year. It handed the Seahawks a Super Bowl..

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