This isn’t just a slump or a one-week blip for the 49ers.

This is the bill coming due.

The Niners entered 2025 with a plan. It was a strange, sour combination of arrogance and cheapness. San Francisco was going to lock in their aging, expensive future Hall of Famers and quarterback Brock Purdy to massive contracts and, well, that would be the extent of their serious offseason spending.

The rest of the roster would be moderately-priced special teamers and the fruits of the last two drafts, including the 2025 class.

And while the Niners are 6-4 on the season and still have an excellent chance to make the playoffs, you’d be hard-pressed to say the plan is working.

They overestimated their young players. They overestimated their veterans’ durability. And they fundamentally misunderstood their league.

The NFL always collects. It is a league of violent attrition, and the 49ers’ “stars and scrubs” model was a high-wire act with no safety net — a fact they’re finding out week by week.

Sunday, folks, is what happens when Nick Bosa, Fred Warner, and your first-round rookie, Mykel Williams, all go down for the season — or defense can’t stop the run or rush the passer.

And what happens when Brock Purdy and Ricky Pearsall vanish for six weeks? You might still be able to move the ball a bit, but you’re limited in what you can do on the offensive side, and you give the ball to Christian McCaffrey 500 times in a season.

In short, you’re left overextending those few stars who survived the purge and are trying to make due with the scrubs.

And those scrubs are being exposed.

Rookie safety Marques Sigle? Benched. Rookie guard Connor Colby? Also benched. Second-year corner Renardo Green is being picked on, and rookie Upton Stout often looks completely lost. That’s merely a few of the many, many names I could list.

Are the 49ers developing these young players or merely tossing them to the wolves and seeing who survives?

The band for success for this season was so narrow that it’s, frankly, incredible the Niners were able to amass six wins. That’s a credit to great coaching, opportunistic play, and an easy schedule.

And perhaps the failures of this season can simply be attributed to bad luck. No team in the NFL is more injured than the 49ers.

Then again, they built a roster around the exact kind of players who are injured most often: veterans who are on the back halves of their careers, a diminutive quarterback, and first- and second-year players.

And even if we are to look long-term, as the Niners have been doing —at least internally — all season (and will encourage you and the fanbase to do in the coming weeks), it’s hard to make the argument that this plan is working.

The last two drafts have not borne enough fruit. They have, however, required the Niners to sign Kendrick Bourne off the street.

And the only way to properly highlight how this has gone wrong is to go pick-by-pick.

📅 2025

**Round 1 **Pick 11 | Mykel Williams | DL

Provided more impact than he received credit for, but was hardly a flashy player in his rookie campaign, which ended with a torn ACL in Week 9. Might be more of a quality role player than a superstar, which will confuse those who watch games via YouTube highlights, but is ultimately positive value.

Round 2 Pick 43 | Alfred Collins | DT

The boom-or-bust prospect has been a boom-or-bust player in the NFL. He missed Sunday’s game with a hip injury but has improved since the season began. Still a massive question mark — a status he might never shed, much like those blocks from interior offensive linemen.

Round 3 Pick 75 | Nick Martin | LB

The 49ers were defiant when they selected him No. 75, despite no one I know in the league having a Day Two grade on him. We didn’t see what they see, I guess.

Well, now they seem hellbent on not playing him from scrimmage or special teams. Their actions to keep him off the field are an implicit admission that they were wrong to reach for him with a vital top-100 pick, though I told you that in the spring.

Pick 100 | Upton Stout | CB

Stout is up and down. He’s an undersized rookie at an extremely difficult position. No determination can be made yet on whether he was a successful pick, but his temperament makes it easy to feel optimistic about his ability to figure it out.

Round 4 Pick 113 | C.J. West | DL

The Niners have already made him a healthy(ish) scratch. He hasn’t shown the people-moving ability from his Indiana tape. He’s certainly not a bust, but he’s still waiting for his breakout game.

Pick 138 | Jordan Watkins | WR

Started the season injured, hasn’t been a factor since being activated.

Round 5 Pick 147 | Jordan James | RB

The Niners have no interest in playing him. He’s yet to be activated for a game.

Pick 160 | Marques Sigle | S

Appeared to be the coaching staff’s new favorite to start the season. After eight games, he’s a healthy scratch despite the new safety tandem struggling just as much as he was, if not more.

Round 7 Pick 227 | Kurtis Rourke | QB

He is on a redshirt year, which was always the plan.

Pick 249 | Connor Colby | OL

This was a win for a seventh-round pick, as he was able to step into an NFL game in New Orleans and play quite well. He’s now inactive and third on the left guard depth chart, so the win was short-lived.

Pick 252 | Junior Bergen | WR

The hand-picked selection of the new special teams coordinator, Bergen was cut before the start of the season.

📅 2024

**Round 1 ** Pick 31 | Ricky Pearsall | WR

Has only played in half of the Niners’ games over the last two seasons, and has now missed more time for his knee injury than he did for a gunshot wound. He is an outstanding player when he is available, but “the best ability is availability.” If this is a win, it’s one by the slimmest of margins.

Round 2 Pick 64 | Renardo Green | CB

There’s an All-Pro-caliber corner in there if he could exclusively play man-to-man. Since that is not the case, he is exceptionally up and down, with the downs likely winning out so far in his career.

Round 3 Pick 86 | Dominick Puni | OL

An unquestioned hit. Puni has struggled over his last 15-or-so games after thriving in his first 15-or-so, but he’s an outstanding guard who helps affect winning up front. He’s inarguably the best pick of the last two years.

Round 4 Pick 124 | Malik Mustapha | S

A brilliant rookie season ended with an ACL tear, and he has not fully recovered, as his play so far this year has been lackluster at best. The future is still bright, but the Niners would like him to provide them a reminder of that fact sooner rather than later.

Pick 129 | Isaac Guerendo | RB

Will not receive another carry so long as Kyle Shanahan is calling the offense. The Niners have effectively turned him into a special teams linebacker.

Pick 135 | Jacob Cowing | WR

A non-factor who is currently injured and might not be reactivated because, well, why bother?

Round 6 Pick 215 | Jarrett Kingston | OL

Cut before the start of the 2024 season.

Round 7 Pick 251 | Tatum Bethune | LB

A pleasant and necessary surprise. Bethune has played well at middle linebacker in the absence of the injured Fred Warner. Though his deficiencies in pass coverage are a liability, this was a hit.

Of course, not all draft picks are created equal — you’re afforded plenty of leniency when you’re selecting on Day 3 as opposed to No. 11 overall — but at the same time, once the selections have been made, everyone is equal in an NFL locker room.

What do these 19 picks add up to? Five hits, being generous?

That’s hardly the foundation for a strong future, even if it is fundamentally unfair to make definitive determinations on players after 27 or 10 games.

But when you add in the threadbare drafts of 2023 and 2022, you see why “stars and scrubs” was such a silly premise.

Alas, it appears that the Niners were truly San Francisco’s team: they believed they were the smartest guys in the room — owner on down — and went all in on their own hype.

What will it bring them? That’s for the rest of this season to decide.

The playoffs? They don’t matter all that much because there’s a zero percent chance this team will go deep in them, should they even make it that far.

No, setting this team up for future playoff runs — deep ones — is what this season has been and will continue to be all about.

And halfway through the campaign, do you see any headway being made?