The San Francisco 49ers have their 2026 team captains. The same list as 2025. During his Sunday press conference in preparation for the 49ers’ Thursday game against the Los Angeles Rams, Kyle Shanahan gave the list of team captains:
TE George Kittle
OT Trent Williams
LB Fred Warner
QB Brock Purdy
DE Nick Bosa
RB Christian McCaffrey
FB Kyle Juszcyk
CB Deommodore Lenoir
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As said above, if that list seems familiar, that’s because it’s the same list as last season. The 49ers vote on who makes it as a captain, so this means the leadership pecking order in the locker room remains unchanged.
The 49ers are a very talented roster, but the fact that the list remains the same as a year ago, with no new faces, probably won’t help the criticisms that the team is too “old.” The ‘newest’ name on this list is Lenoir, whose ascension last year essentially filled the vacancy left by Deebo Samuel.
While we can debate the roster’s age all we want, established veterans doing the heavy lifting means they have capable leadership. Hopefully Bosa can stay on the field to help the defensive line turn a corner. The same goes for Brock Purdy and George Kittle. With a rookie De’Zhaun Stribling impressing in the preseason, having Purdy and Kittle to look up to will be invaluable.
At the same time, who would you bump off that list? Those names are the backbone of the 49ers, and if someone like Trent Williams wasn’t on there, that would be strange.
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We’re a long way removed from 2017, Shanahan’s first season, and a season he did the captains a bit differently. Rather than elect team captains for the season, captains were rotated game-by-game. So each game, a different set of players walked out for the coin toss.
Having this list of captains isn’t surprising, and certainly isn’t concerning either; those names have a lot of experience hoisting the workload onto their shoulders and can help keep the rest of the team stabilized. That said, it’s really hard to think of any of those names not being a captain in 2027 because they were no longer on the team.
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