Niners' magical season ends in hopelessness

What happens when there isn’t any more? When the season that was so magical becomes so prosaic and sad? When the dream so unexpectedly becomes, if not a nightmare, than a feeling of hopelessness?

What happens when everything that was going so right goes so very wrong? When you lose your quarterback, your cool and most significantly the game that was going to put you into the Super Bowl?

Everybody knew the Philadelphia Eagles were a great team. Didn’t they have the best record in the NFC? Weren’t they playing at home Sunday? Maybe if the 49ers aren’t forced to use a quarterback who in effect was fourth string, Philly still dominates as it did, crushing the 49ers, 31-7.

Or maybe not.

You’ve heard the phrase — part reality, part agony — that one plays the cards he or she is dealt. Your starting quarterback gets pummeled minutes into the game? Your usually disciplined defense starts making one penalty after another? The officials seem biased? (Which they are not).

Kismet, baby. Fate. You do the best you can.

Unfortunately for the Niners, down to a quarterback who virtually had been found in the wilderness, 36-year-old Josh Johnson, getting called for penalties after what might have been a game-deciding sequence, the best wasn’t good enough.

And so it is done, this 2022 season, when a kid who was known as Mr. Irrelevant, quarterback Brock Purdy, had helped win a dozen games in succession, and in the process won plaudits and fame.

It was being billed as a fairy tale, the guy taken at the bottom of the draft, along with a defense that was on top of the league stats, bringing a title to the City by the Bay. But as we learned as kids, not all fairy tales have a happy ending.

And yet, this topsy-turvy Niner season has just concluded — the 3-4 start, the injury to the QB who was the starter; the injury to the steadfast loyal kid who replaced him, Jimmy Garoppolo; then on Sunday the injury to the kid who replaced Jimmy G, the surprisingly skilled Purdy.

If you’re a Niners fan, even a fan of pro football, do you cling only to the results of the final game, the end, or are you able to find at least a small measure of satisfaction in that big picture, a long winning streak and, after yet another victory over the Dallas Cowboys, a place in the conference title game?

Donte Whitner, a onetime defensive back, said in so many words that the only way to judge success is whether a team wins the Super Bowl. Or doesn’t win the Super Bowl.

That’s a bit shortsighted. The Niners didn’t even advance to the Super Bowl, but look at what was accomplished. The man at the most important position, the quarterback, gets knocked out of the game so quickly. It is not Brock Purdy’s fault or coach Kyle Shanahan’s fault.

“I wish we had a little better opportunity,” said Shanahan, understandably emotional.

If wishes were horses … you know the saying. The only place this Niners team will be riding is off into the sunset.