5 bold 49ers predictions for 2024: Brandon Aiyuk will lead the NFL in receiving yards

With camp and the preseason in the rearview mirror, the hypothetical conversations of what will happen during the 2024 season will turn to what did happen.

The final hypothetical we practice before the regular season kicks off is making outlandish predictions but protecting them by calling them bold. Last season, I don’t think I went bold enough, so this year, I decided to go extra bold with my bold predictions for the 2024 San Francisco 49ers:

Brandon Aiyuk will lead the NFL in receiving yards

Accomplishing this might be as simple as a slight increase in targets.

Aiyuk finished seventh in receiving yards last season with a career-high 1,342, following up a 2022 season that saw the receiver eclipse 1,000 yards for the first time. While finishing so high up the leaderboard in yards, Aiyuk finished with the 36th-most targets at 105 – sandwiched between Jakobi Meyers (106) and Jaylen Waddle (104) – which leaves plenty of room for improvement. Aiyuk’s 12.8 yards per target and 17.9 yards per reception finished second behind Khalil Shakir per target and George Pickens per reception.

Tyreek Hill led the league in 2023 with 1,799 yards, followed by Justin Jefferson with 1,809 yards in 2022. Cooper Kupp’s 1,947 yards in 2021 seems to be the outlier in the 17-game season, so let’s set the number to 1,800 for Ayiuk to reach in 2024 to lead the league in receiving yards.

Aiyuk was 458 yards short of 1,800, but if he maintains – or even improves – his per-target and reception numbers, an increase of about 35 targets to 140 or 25 receptions to 100 would mathematically do the trick.

Neither 140 targets nor 100 receptions would have finished in the top ten for pass-catchers in 2023, but while mathematically logical, the execution of getting those targets will be much more challenging. Thirty-five more targets for Aiyuk means 35 fewer targets for Deebo Samuel, George Kittle, and Christian McCaffrey.

But that’s a problem for Kyle Shanahan to solve. I am just a blogger using numbers to play football.

Leonard Floyd will finish with more sacks than Nick Bosa

The only time Leonard Floyd has finished a season with more sacks than Nick Bosa since Bosa entered the league was in 2020 when Bosa’s season ended in Week 2. 2023 was the closest Floyd has come since, with both finishing the year with 10.5 sacks each. However, Bosa’s lengthy holdout may have played a role in his lowest sack total since his rookie season.

The 49ers signed Floyd over the offseason in the most recent attempt to find a consistent pass rusher opposite Bosa. Floyd’s 39.5 sacks are the 10th-most in the NFL over the last four seasons, with his 10.5 sacks last season matching his career-high set in 2020.

Now, 10.5 is far from the 15-plus sacks it could take to surpass Bosa in 2024, but lining up across from Bosa could be a benefit. How many times have we seen a Bosa pressure – he had a league-high 122 of them in 2023 – lead to a quarterback being able to spin out of the pocket and either find a man downfield or scramble for a first down?

Well, this bold prediction will lean heavily on Floyd being able to clean up the back end when a Bosa pressure doesn’t quite hit the mark. Bosa will get his own in the sack category in 2024, that’s for sure, but Floyd will prove to be that elite partner the 49ers have been so desperately seeking for the No. 2 pick in the 2019 draft.

The 49ers defense will set a franchise record in sacks while intercepting at least 30 passes

I’ll pull the curtain back here and say this bold prediction is based on the Floyd/Bosa prediction above. If Floyd and Bosa combine for 30 sacks, and Javon Hargrave and Maliek Collins combine for, say, 15 more, then the franchise record of 61 sacks set in 1976 isn’t too far off to be in the realm of possibilities.

With the sack record setup, the next logical step would be to predict the 2024 49ers would break both the franchise records in sacks and interceptions. Then I looked up the 49ers’ franchise record in interceptions.

39 in 1986. That’s the eighth-most in a single season in NFL history. Since then, the closest a team has come was 36 interceptions by the 1988 Minnesota Vikings.

The 2023 49ers led the NFL with 22 interceptions. 39 feels like a very, very, very far shout from 22. That’s why we will settle for a franchise record in sacks and 30 interceptions.

Since the 1986 49ers intercepted 39 passes, only 15 teams have recorded 30 or more interceptions in a season. Only six of those instances happened this side of the year 2000, with the most recent 30-interception team being the 2011 Green Bay Packers.

The 49ers have been tied for the league lead in interceptions each of the last two seasons, with 22 last season and 20 in 2022. Charvarius Ward and Deommodor Lenoir have established themselves as one of the better secondary duos in the league, having combined for eight interceptions last season. The cornerback room now offers as much depth as it has in the Shanahan/Lynch era, with Renardo Green, Rock Ya-Sin, and Isaac Yiadom behind the duo. Talanoa Hufanga might miss a few games to open the season, but he’s shown a knack for intercepting some passes, and Ji’Ayir Brown had a few interceptions in his rookie season.

It would take an awful lot to hit both of the milestones, but if there’s a defense built to break some records, it could be this version of the 49ers offense.

Brock Purdy will win NFL MVP

Brock Purdy was thrown into an impossible situation during his rookie season and came out with impressive numbers over a five-game stretch. Then, in 2023, he put up the same production level from 2022 but stretched over a 17-game season, resulting in one of the best statistical seasons for a 49ers quarterback.

The next logical step would be a league-wide recognition like the Most Valuable Player award. Purdy came somewhat close in 2023 to the award, finishing fourth in voting behind only Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, and teammate Chrisitan McCaffrey.

Purdy’s most prominent benefit over every other quarterback in the league is the quality and quantity of targets around him. Still, last season, he threw the ball just 444 times, 20th-most among all quarterbacks. Every quarterback who received an MVP vote the previous season threw the ball more than Purdy, but Purdy led the league in both touchdown percentage and yards per attempt.

Shanahan had an MVP quarterback in the past when Matt Ryan won the award in 2016 with 534 pass attempts and an eerily similar touchdown rate and yards per attempt. If Purdy’s baseline season is what he showed in 2023, maybe Shanahan will allow him to throw the ball a bit more in 2024 and see what the 49ers have at quarterback.

The San Francisco 49ers will win Super Bowl LIX

On the surface, this doesn’t feel like a bold prediction. The San Francisco are and have been a very talented football team. If there’s a team on paper to pick to win the Super Bowl, the 49ers would likely be that pick until you get to the part of the paper that says who the Chiefs have at quarterback.

But after you dig past the surface a bit and look at the mental and emotional toll the 49ers have put on this fanbase, not just over the last five years but also since the Harbaugh era, this might be the boldest take yet.

It’s not just that the 49ers have come up short in their quest for six multiple times in the past few seasons, but how they’ve come up short is the exhausting part. You would think the bad luck would run out at some point, but each loss has been more excruciating than the last.

That changes this season.

This 49ers team is just as talented as any previous teams, if not better. Purdy has another year under his belt, and the 49ers offense found some untapped potential last season that can be grown upon in 2024. The defense might have lacked last season, but with a new defensive coordinator and some reworked parts at every level, 2023 could be an exception to what has been consistently one of the best defenses in the league.

A lot needs to go right for a Super Bowl season, so why can’t this finally be the year everything falls into place for the San Francisco 49ers?