One of the most crushing parts for an NFL team that loses a Super Bowl is the knowledge that the climb back up the mountain is going to be exponentially harder than the previous year’s climb. Oftentimes that steep grade sees contending teams fall and underachieve the year after a Super Bowl loss. That’s typically known as the ‘Super Bowl hangover’ and it’s something the San Francisco 49ers are aiming to avoid in the 2024 campaign after an overtime loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII.
Sometimes intangible things like Super Bowl hangovers can be overblown by fans and people who cover the league. They’re an easy concept to grasp and they logically make sense so we ascribe them to players and teams to explain away other problems. However, 49ers linebacker Fred Warner knows the Super Bowl hangover is very real. At the same time, he knows it can’t be something the team is thinking about going into the 2024 campaign.
Speaking with the Candlestick Chronicles podcast on behalf of health technology leader ‘Abbott’ as part of their ‘Beat Malnutrition’ campaign with Real Madrid, Warner said that while the Super Bowl hangover is real, it can’t be something the 49ers are thinking about.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Warner said. “You’ve gotta get right back on the horse and get back to work and make sure that you are better this time around than you were last time. Because if we all just show up and we’re like ‘we’re gonna be the exact same team. We’re gonna get back. We’ll figure out a way to pull it off next time.’ That’s just not how it works. You’ve gotta be better than before, and also learn from those mistakes which we will.”
San Francisco has now been to two Super Bowls since Warner’s arrival as a third-round pick in the 2018 draft. Their first trip in 2019 was followed by a bizarre 2020 season that was altered by the COVID-19 pandemic where the 49ers dealt with too many injuries to be credibly competitive.
While there haven’t been a ton of Super Bowl losses to recover from, crushing end-of-season defeats just shy of a championship have defined the 49ers over the last six seasons.
In 2021 they lost a late lead to their NFC West rival Los Angeles Rams in the NFC championship game. In 2022 quarterback Brock Purdy tore his UCL on their first offensive series against the Eagles and ostensibly ended their championship hopes. Then in 2023 they suffered the second Super Bowl defeat of Warner’s career. He said he learned plenty from that game and the others, but that he’s ready to stop learning those lessons.
“I know I’ve learned from it,” Warner told Candlestick Chronicles. “I always look back on the tape, and that’s the hardest part honestly is watching it. It is painful to watch when you didn’t achieve that thing that you set out to achieve. There are little things within that game, everyone wants to point out the whole coin toss thing and we can go all day about that, but there were so many moments in that game to seal the deal, right? Or to really put them away before it got to the end of the game and we just didn’t take advantage of those opportunities.
“There’s plenty to get better from, things to learn. I’ve learned, unfortunately, too much in my career so far and I’m done learning. I want to go out there and put it to work.”
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