Regardless of what Adam Peters says to the media and/or fans regarding the roster going into this season, I am assuming based on how he felt about the roster when he was first hired was behind closed doors he thought this was a long term roster building project. You don't go from valuing barely 3 players as starters from the previous regime to a championship contending caliber team in a few seasons. You can bring in some pieces, you can upgrade in a variety of spots, but this is about building a 53 man roster and the circumstances and situations that go into acquiring talent have so many factors season to season that there are going to be seasons where you feel ahead of progress and seasons you feel behind progress. I also think it is very likely you go through a head coach or two during the process as well. We already have seen both coordinators get shown the door and my assumption is that Adam Peters has a much longer leash than Dan Quinn when all is said and done.
Living out here I witnessed the 49ers team get built over many seasons, which started by taking Alex Smith #1 overall and him being deemed a bust within a few seasons while the organization was also quietly building up that dominant defense and running game. They also were on their third HC (4th if you count Tomsula interning as coach when Singletary was fired) by the time they started the playoff run and championship window.
All this isn't to say that I am settling for waiting THAT long, for one we have an actual difference maker at QB who showed his very first season that he can win if he is surrounded with at least competence on the offense, but this defense has been pretty terrible the last couple of seasons, and the front office put in work to improve that unit, although some key frustrating injuries have some of that impact up in the air for at least the opener and first chunk of the season at this point. A complete rebuild just takes time. This front office didn't take over a .500 team that was on the cusp of something. They took over easily one of the worst modern franchises in the NFL and have been tasked with basically re-inventing their identity to what it was once known to be.
Adam Peters signed a five year contract and I think considering the state of where this franchise was before 2024, it's a reasonable time frame to make this team a consistent winner, so I am willing to ride out that contract with him at the helm and at that point we can re-visit his overall job performance.
Five years to build a consistent winner — seems long if Jayden is who we think he is. Usuallly you don't struggle or even be so so for 4 years with a franchise QB in the helm.
But if the national media is right that this is one of the worst rosters in the NFL, then three years in, after inheriting a ton of draft picks and cap space, that's a poor job by Peters if their assessment is accurate. Personally, while I agree he inherited a bad roster, he also inherited one of the better situations at the time. We forget this now, but this job was hailed as one of the best openings in the league back then — a loaded draft with a ton of picks, including at QB, and a ton of cap room to work with.
Take Denver, for example. They had a better roster than Washington in 2023, but not by much, and their cap and pick situation was a disaster because of the Russell Wilson contract. They might have a top-3 roster now. New England's roster was just as bad as Washington's in 2023 — now it's far more loaded.
That's what happens when you take a bad situation and do a killer job fixing it. Adam Peters took a bad situation and did an OK job fixing it. The best analogy I can give: imagine someone who weighs 300 pounds, but fasts and does everything possible to lose weight, and is now 150 pounds and looks great. Peters inherited the 300-pound starting point, was handed everything he needed to shed the weight — the best dietician, the best trainer — and took off 70 pounds. He's now at 230. That's a decent job. It's far from a killer job. And heck the national media doesn't think he took off any weight, they think this roster sucks. But I go against that narrative. Even the "critics" of Peters here are really homers in contrast to most of the outside world about this team.
Given the QB rookie-contract window, this organization would be far better served with a killer front office rather than one that's just OK so far, because the clock is ticking. Arguably the Bears, Broncos, and Patriots have done a much better job maximizing their own rookie windows. And this isn't just some whiny fan take — it's basically treated as conventional wisdom across the national media, whether it's analytics people, the draft community, or NFL personnel people talking off the record.
Now, hopefully Peters has the last laugh and this team is better than most think. And I think there's a fighting chance he does — not because I believe he's built a great roster, but because I think it's a so-so roster, and that might be enough for Jayden to elevate it. We'll see.
But if this team ends up even mediocre this season — let alone bad, like the national media expects — I think we're lying to ourselves if we say we'd have been perfectly happy, back when Peters was hired, to hear that three years in they'd be sitting at 8-9. I'd bet 99% of us, if we went back in a time machine, would call that disappointing. Many forget that as meh as the Rivera era was, it was mostly a mediocre run, so so teams, and the bottom fell out the last season. If you told me we are back on that Rivera run for the most part and looking at year 5 for it to really come together -- for me at least that would be cringe if I went back in a time machine.