49ers head home early following a trying season that started with Super Bowl hopes

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP) — After three straight seasons of long playoff runs, the San Francisco 49ers are packing up and heading home early for a change.

A season that started with contract disputes that kept stars out of training camp, was a rough one until the end with the 49ers enduring several off-field tragedies, injuries to key players and inconsistent play that left one of the preseason Super Bowl favorites playing out the string the final few weeks of a 6-11 campaign.

“Our standards for this organization are significantly higher,” tight end George Kittle said Monday. “Our expectations for ourselves are higher. Our goals were higher. We didn’t achieve any of these. So it’s disappointing."

The 49ers never looked quite like a contender this season, starting when Brandon Aiyuk and Trent Williams held out of training camp practices looking for new contracts.

Then rookie receiver Ricky Pearsall was shot in the chest in San Francisco a week before the opener, sidelining him for the first half of the season.

Reigning Offensive Player of the Year Christian McCaffrey missed the first half of the season with Achilles tendinitis and then hurt his knee in his fourth game back and was shut down for the rest of the season.

Aiyuk, Williams, Javon Hargrave, Nick Bosa, Dre Greenlaw, Talanoa Hufanga, Jordan Mason are among the other key players who missed significant time with injuries.

There was also personal tragedy with Williams' wife giving birth to a stillborn son and cornerback Charvarius Ward's 1-year-old daughter dying.

The play on the field also wasn't up to the usual standard as many of the players who played a big part in the team's trip to the Super Bowl last season weren't able to match that play in 2024.

“We didn’t do it. It stings,” quarterback Brock Purdy said. “But more than anything, how I’m looking at it and a lot of guys are is we have some time away to reflect on it and come back hungry, ready to do what it takes to get back on track of playing Niner football and winning and being excellent across the board.”

After finishing fourth in MVP voting in his first full season as a starter in 2023, Purdy was far less productive this season. He took steps to become a more vocal leader and showed off even more mobility to extend plays, but wasn't nearly as efficient as a passer. His passer rating dropped nearly 17 points to 96.1 and he had only 20 TD passes and 12 INTs on the season. He also came up short in several late-game scenarios when the Niners had a chance for a comeback win.

San Francisco has excelled defensively the previous five seasons, ranking first in yards per play allowed, fourth in points allowed and seventh in takeaways. The Niners had significant drops in all three areas in the first season under coordinator Nick Sorensen. The issues were particularly glaring in the second half of the season when San Francisco had the fewest takeaways (two) and allowed the third-most points per game (28.2) over the final nine games.

“It’s just a lack of execution, lack of takeaways, lack of everything, honestly,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “It wasn’t even close to the standard of what I’ve known.”

One of the few bright spots for San Francisco has been the play of the rookie class. After two years of almost no impact from the draft class outside of Purdy, the Niners found several key contributors.

Third-rounder Dominick Puni was a day one starter at right guard and looks poised to hold down that job for years to come. Second-round cornerback Renardo Green, fourth-round safety Malik Mustapha and fourth-round running back Isaac Guerendo all made key contributions and should have key roles next season.

Pearsall's production was limited after missing time, but he finished strong with 14 catches for 210 yards and two TDs the last two games.

A recurring issue all season has been the play of San Francisco's special teams. The team has been beaten on two fake punts, allowed a blocked punt, gave up a kickoff return TD and had three turnovers on returns. That led to the decision to fire special teams coordinator Brian Schneider, a person familiar with the move told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the team hadn't made an announcement.

A more concerning question revolves around kicker Jake Moody, who was picked in the third round of the 2023 draft. His missed a league-high 10 field goals was 5 for 14 on FGs from at least 40 yards since returning from a high ankle sprain in Week 10.

The first immediate question of the offseason will be about Purdy's contract as he is now eligible to negotiate an extension from his rookie deal that has one year left and has been paying him about $1 million a year.

The next deal for Purdy will be far richer with nine quarterbacks in the league having contracts worth at least $50 million a year.

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL

San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner answers questions after an NFL football game against the Detroit Lions, Monday, Dec. 30, 2024, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall (14) and quarterback Joshua Dobbs (5) celebrate a touchdown against the Arizona Cardinals during the first half of an NFL football game in Glendale, Ariz., Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan argues a call with an official during the first half of an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals in Glendale, Ariz., Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) walks off the field after a loss to the Detroit Lions in an NFL football game Monday, Dec. 30, 2024, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Jed Jacobsohn)

President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” a name he said has a “beautiful ring to it.”

It's his latest suggestion to redraw the map of the Western Hemisphere. Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st State,” demanded that Denmark consider ceding Greenland, and called for Panama to return the Panama Canal.

Here's a look at his comment and what goes into a name.

Since his first run for the White House in 2016, Trump has repeatedly clashed with Mexico over a number of issues, including border security and the imposition of tariffs on imported goods. He vowed then to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. The U.S. ultimately constructed or refurbished about 450 miles of wall during his first term.

The Gulf of Mexico is often referred to as the United States' “Third Coast” due to its coastline across five southeastern states. Mexicans use a Spanish version of the same name for the gulf: “El Golfo de México.”

Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.

Maybe, but it's not a unilateral decision, and other countries don't have to go along.

The International Hydrographic Organization — of which both the United States and Mexico are members — works to ensure all the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly, and also names some of them. There are instances where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names in their own documentation.

It can be easier when a landmark or body of water is within a country's boundaries. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama approved an order from the Department of Interior to rename Mount McKinley — the highest peak in North America — to Denali, a move that Trump has also said he wants to reverse.

Just after Trump's comments on Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said during an interview with podcaster Benny Johnson that she would direct her staff to draft legislation to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, a move she said would take care of funding for new maps and administrative policy materials throughout the federal government.

The body of water has been depicted with that name for more than four centuries, an original determination believed to have been taken from a Native American city of “Mexico.”

Yes. In 2012, a member of the Mississippi Legislature proposed a bill to rename portions of the gulf that touch that state's beaches “Gulf of America,” a move the bill author later referred to as a “joke.” That bill, which was referred to a committee, did not pass.

Two years earlier, comedian Stephen Colbert had joked on his show that, following the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it should be renamed “Gulf of America” because, "We broke it, we bought it.”

There's a long-running dispute over the name of the Sea of Japan among Japan, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, with South Korea arguing that the current name wasn't commonly used until Korea was under Japanese rule. At an International Hydrographic Organization meeting in 2020, member states agreed on a plan to replace names with numerical identifiers and develop a new digital standard for modern geographic information systems.

The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company's decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps.

There have been other conversations about bodies of water, including from Trump’s 2016 opponent. According to materials revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of her campaign chairman’s personal account, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2013 told an audience that, by China’s logic that it claimed nearly the entirety of the South China Sea, then the U.S. after World War II could have labeled the Pacific Ocean the “American Sea.”

Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

President-elect Donald Trump walks from the podium after a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)