You work your ass off for months. OTAs, minicamps, training camps, preseason games. There’s the summer heat, the boredom, the meaningless drills, the social media goofiness that fills the media vacuum.

If you’re one of the lucky two, you reach the Super Bowl. If you’re the unlucky one, you lose it. For the winner, it’s months of accolades, late night talk show appearances, rich ad endorsements, a trip to the White House. For the loser, it’s months of ‘what might have been’ and ‘woulda coulda shoulda.’

History tells us that Super Bowl losers definitely slump to start the following season. Just look at this season’s San Francisco 49ers. They are now 2-3 and have blown two-score leads — both in the fourth quarter — to the Los Angeles Rams and Arizona Cardinals. All of this several months after SF lost another two-score lead to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl losers have stumbled out of the gate the following season with surprising consistency. Check out the pattern that has happened with SB losers over the past couple of decades:

• 2024 49ers: Now 2-3
• 2023 Eagles: Started 10-1 but lost 5 of their final 6 regular-season games and their first playoff game
• 2022 Bengals: Started 4-4, later lost to Chiefs in playoffs
• 2021 Chiefs: Started 3-4, later lost to Bengals in playoffs
• 2020 49ers: Started 2-3, finished 6-11
• 2019 Rams: Started 3-3, missed playoffs
• 2018 Patriots: Started 1-2, beat Rams in Super Bowl
• 2017 Falcons: Started 3-3, lost to Eagles in playoffs
• 2016 Panthers: Started 1-4, missed playoffs
• 2015 Seahawks: Started 2-4, lost to Panthers in playoffs
• 2014 Broncos: Went 12-4, lost to Colts in playoffs
• 2013 49ers: Started 1-2, lost to Seahawks in playoffs
• 2012 Patriots: Started 3-3, lost to Ravens in playoffs
• 2011 Steelers: Started 2-2, lost to Broncos in playoffs
• 2010 Colts: Started 2-2, lost to Jets in playoffs
• 2009 Cardinals: Started 1-2, lost to Saints in playoffs
• 2008 Patriots: Started 11-5, missed playoffs (Tom Brady was knocked out for the season with a injury in Week 1)
• 2007 Bears: Went 7-9, missed playoffs

Fool’s Gold for 49ers So Far

This year’s current Super Bowl hangover victim is definitely playing like they’re recovering from a Saturday night binge. With Christian McCaffrey on IR (he reportedly could return vs the Chiefs in Week 7), QB Brock Purdy has been somewhat exposed as a guy who really can’t put the offense on his smallish shoulders. Not that he was ever supposed to be the second coming of Mahomes or Brady or Manning, but Mr Irrelevant 2022 is 5-5 in his past five starts with 11 TD passes and nine turnovers.

The 49ers’ red zone offense now basically consists of 1-yard runs, incomplete passes and short passes that don’t wind up in the endzone. The defense has been burned several times — including a 97-yard Darnold-to-Jefferson TD and a 50-yard TD scamper by Kyler Murray. Head coach Kyle Shanahan runs when he should pass, passes when he should run, and the special teams has been nothing less than a carnival of cheap laughs.

In short, SF is playing like hot garbage.

Will they turn it around? They have before. In 2021, SF started 3-5 and got to the NFC Championship Game. In 2022, they started 3-4 and again got to the NFC final. Last season, they started 5-0, lost three straight, but then won eight of their final nine games to earn the No. 1 seed en route to losing (again) to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.

If CMC does manage to return from his bilateral Achilles’ tendon injury, the 49ers surely have the talent to make another run and win the mediocre NFC West.

Hangovers Often Don’t Last

Despite the early-season struggles of SB losers, the silver lining is that most of these teams did manage to course-correct and get back to the playoffs.

But that’s where their luck runs out. You didn’t get it done in the big game and that doesn’t mean you get a golden ticket to blow it the following year. Only three teams in NFL history have won the Super Bowl after losing it the previous season: the 1971 Dallas Cowboys, 1972 Miami Dolphins, 2018 New England Patriots.

So, sorry guys, win the ring now or fuhgeddaboudit.

Why the crappy starts? It can be a lot of things. Injuries, a tougher schedule, or maybe other teams have figured out ways to stop your offense. Maybe your one-hit wonders have come back to Earth. Maybe you lost players to free agency.

Or maybe it’s just a mind thing: “We blew the Super Bowl. Maybe we aren’t really that great.”

Who knows? For whatever reason, it comes down to having to win the Big Bowl when you have the chance, because there might not be a “better luck next time.”