The San Francisco 49ers wrapped up their first padded practice of training camp, and we’ll have some recap info in the next couple hours. In the meantime, I wanted to share an annual preview article that always cracks me up. Each year, the folks at Deadspin put together a series called, “Why Your Team Sucks.” They go through all 32 teams and basically roast them as best they can. The snark is impressive, and what makes it perfect is that there is truth to everything they say. It might be exaggerated at times, but it comes from some semblance of fact.
This year’s version of Why the 49ers suck is particularly harsh, which should surprise nobody. The 49ers are coming off an awful 2015 season that is resulting in their third head coach in as many seasons. They play in a stadium that is the subject of extensive mockery, and they are connected to a city that is also easy to mock. They have a quarterback competition that is questionable to a certain degree. They hired a coach coming off all sorts of drama in Philadelphia, and he is replacing Deadspin favorite, Jim Tomsula.
They do offer up a “what might not suck section, just to throw homers a bone, but even that offers some snark mixed in with truth:
What might not suck: Carlos Hyde! If you made Furiosa’s truck into a running back, occasional breakdowns included, you’d have this man.
Of course, there is plenty of room to rag on Jed York and the stadium. They go back and forth in discussing San Francisco vs. Silicon Valley, but the point is pretty clear and on the nose:
This is exactly what San Francisco deserves. We’re talking about a city that has become America’s answer to Dubai…a place of unimaginable and conspicuous wealth, girded by shoddily hidden poverty and despair. It’s a city flooded with equal parts money and human feces, a city so expensive that the only people who can afford to live there are idiot Google doofuses who take the shuttle to work in the South Bay and never explore their own goddamn neighborhoods.
York, seen here auditioning for the role of Andrew Luck’s alcoholic cousin, is a perfect avatar for the city’s plight. He’s a spoiled little shitbag whose business acumen exists only in his imagination, presiding over a stadium whose technological innovations are vastly overstated, sucking money out of his hometown from a faraway compound. Everything about the Niners, especially their futility, is a gigantic Silicon Valley circle jerk.
There’s nothing quite like a good roast!