49ers talk about Super Bowl loss in the locker room
49ers try to rebound from the trauma of losing
The off-season officially started for the San Francisco 49ers on Tuesday. The players cleaned out their lockers and headed their separate ways still hurting from Sundays Super Bowl 58 loss. We were at Levis Stadium to see how the team is trying to rebound from the trauma of losing.
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - In their first hometown locker room interviews on Tuesday after losing the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs, the San Francisco 49ers lamented their fate in candid and somber conversations.
Quarterback Brock Purdy was pretty blunt: "It sucks."
Then, he added: "But that's the game that we play."
Purdy said that he and his teammates have to find a way to take the defeat – 22 to 25 in overtime – and "find a way to roll that into next year."
While the game was a nail-biter, it wasn’t the most well-played game, with both teams losing big turnovers and neither offense really doing much until the end, when fatigue might have been a factor.
The 49ers were about as close to a championship as a team could be without winning it, and coach Kyle Shanahan is still chasing a title after losing another Super Bowl. He’s been on the wrong end of the only two Super Bowls to go to overtime — this one and Super Bowl 51, which he lost as an offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons.
Shanahan is one of the game’s most influential offensive minds, but this wasn’t one of his masterpieces. The 49ers got 160 total yards from Christian McCaffrey, but two touchdowns and three field goals weren’t enough for San Francisco to win. And Shanahan’s decision to take the ball first in overtime raised some eyebrows.
Meanwhile, Kansas City’s Andy Reid won his third Super Bowl title.
WATCH: 49ers talk Super Bowl loss
49er wide receiver Deebo Samuel said he wasn't even looking ahead to next year, at least not yet.
"It doesn't even feel like it's real right now," Samuel said. "I can't even describe it. It's like one of the biggest heartbreaks that you have to deal with."
He said he hasn't yet watched Sunday's game tape and has no immediate plans or thoughts for the future.
He's just getting by day to day.
"You just gotta deal with it," Samuel said. "This one's real tough."
Running back Christian McCaffrey, who had a personal win of being named "Best 2023 NFL Offensive Player of the Year" just before the Super Bowl, acknowledged that losing as a team was hard.
"It definitely makes you more hungry," he said. "It definitely hurts worse."
Fullback Kyle Juszczyk said the loss hurt so much because they knew what an incredible opportunity they had with such a talented group.
"We squandered a good opportunity," he said.
There wasn't one thing that he thought led to the defeat, there were a "million things," Juszczyk said, noting that the Chiefs played a lot better on offense.
Still, he said, that's no excuse.
"We should have scored a lot more points," Juszczyk said.
He said he wished he could snap his fingers back to Sunday's Super Bowl to play it again.
"But I know, that's not how it works," he said. "Right now, my body, my mind isn't ready to think about that. But I know it will be. It's my career, it's my life."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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