The fall from the 49ers’ Super Bowl season of 2012 was, at first, a slow descent followed by the dramatic tumbles of the past two seasons.
There may be a lot of reasons for the 49ers’ decline from a Super Bowl contender in three consecutive seasons to a .500 team in 2014 to one of the worst teams in the league in 2015.
But one unavoidable fact is that the vast majority of the team’s Super Bowl starters were either peaking in their careers at the same time or still playing at a high level before injuries, age or motivation soon would be responsible for steep declines.