SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Outside the walls of Levi's Stadium, the San Francisco 49ers' 2017 season will be judged in the same way as that of the other 31 teams: by the numbers that appear in columns designated for wins and losses.
Inside the building, however, there are plenty of other barometers that will be used to measure a successful season. Such is life for a team working to rebuild after it hit what it hopes was a rock-bottom 2-14 in 2016.
After a three-year drop-off that saw the Niners go from an NFC Championship Game mainstay to 15 wins in the three seasons that followed, it became abundantly clear that the quick fixes attempted in the two previous offseasons needed to make way for a full-fledged rebuild.
So it was that 49ers CEO Jed York fired coach Chip Kelly and general manager Trent Baalke and paired first-timers Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch at those positions. York didn't just hire them; he handed them lucrative and unprecedented six-year contracts with an eye toward the long-term future.
Along with that came a recalibration of expectations around a team that not only won just twice last season but also finished 31st in offense and 32nd in defense.
"I think the big thing with us giving both those guys six-year deals, we're not measuring wins and losses this year," York said. "It's really, can we start to build this foundation? Can we start to build a culture that can be sustainable? And that's what we want to see. There's no measurement that I'm looking at. It's really, 'How are we coming together, and what are we doing?' I think we have a chance to surprise people, but that's only going to matter if we build the right culture. If we don't have the right culture, we might win a game here or there, but it's not going to be sustainable. We're trying to build something that's going to be sustainable for a long period of time."
That isn't to say the 49ers are becoming a sort of West Coast version of the Philadelphia 76ers, embracing the "Process" and purposefully tanking for multiple years to secure multiple top draft picks. If they were, they wouldn't have been so active in free agency, handing out big contracts to veterans such as quarterback Brian Hoyer, receiver Pierre Garcon, linebacker Malcolm Smith and defensive tackle Earl Mitchell. What's more, they definitely wouldn't have signed 33-year-old defensive end Elvis Dumervil.
No, the Niners made those moves with the belief that established players could help them build for the long term while making them more competitive in the short term. Still, there were just too many holes to fill in one offseason.
The fact that nobody views the 49ers as a threat this year -- they're 100-to-1 long shots to win the Super Bowl, with only the Jets and Bills having worse odds -- can only serve as motivation to outperform those expectations and expedite the rebuilding process.
Even if the Niners do win, say, five to seven games, a range of performance that would qualify as encouraging in the eyes of most, they want to come out of this season with a solid foundation upon which to build.
"You know everyone else is going to judge you based off your wins and losses, and that's what you sign up for in the business," Shanahan said. "What I've learned and the reason I don't talk about that stuff or even really think about it is because there's nothing I can do about how many wins we have or how many losses. All I know I can do is coach as good as I can and prepare the team as well as I can. When that happens, when I feel we're prepared the best way and our guys are playing the hardest, that's what I'm proud of."
In other words, while the 49ers might not be installing their own capital-P "Process," they are focused on the lowercase version of it.
For example, the Niners lost their second and third preseason games to Denver and Minnesota. The loss to the Broncos left Shanahan visibly upset because his team turned the ball over five times and never really gave itself a chance to get much-needed snaps on offense -- let alone win the game. The following week in Minnesota, the 49ers were far more competitive, and the starting units looked game-ready. They lost late, which still annoyed Shanahan, but it wasn't that early success that left him feeling better about his team.
"I was a helluva lot more proud of the Minnesota game than the Denver game," Shanahan said. "Not because we started off fast or anything like that, but because if I didn't ever look at the score, if I turned on the tape, guys moved faster, they hit harder, 11 guys swarmed to the ball better. We opened up the game coming off the ball and not hesitating. I saw guys play as hard as they could. We'll coach them up on how they could play better and what they could do in certain situations, but I was proud of what we put on tape.
"That's kind of my goal for the year is that we develop a standard that there's no highs and lows, we go as hard as we can every single second, and whether it's practice, walk-through or games, that's who we are, and that's what I'm trying to get done. I don't want 'Hey, we did good this week, we can chill out and lose our edge, and now we can just show up and we'll win.' No, we'll get our ass kicked next week. I want every single day to be treated like it's everything."
Developing that standard of steadiness is something even Shanahan acknowledges he must work on. Mitchell has said Shanahan has told his players to be like sharks, constantly going about their business and coming to work with the same attitude every day.
But Shanahan also isn't very good at hiding his feelings.
"It's extremely difficult for me just because I wear my emotions on my sleeves a lot," Shanahan said. "I'm pissed a lot. I'm usually my best when I'm upset because it challenges me, and I don't like to not do something about it. If something is bothering me, it's usually for a reason. And that's what motivates me to figure out a way to fix it, and it also gets me to go fix it. So when things aren't going great, guys will see me more bothered. But when they're going well, if I feel everyone is relaxing too much and just enjoying it, they'll see me very bothered. If I think things are going well and guys are practicing with momentum and just getting better and better, I'll be a little more relaxed. It depends on atmosphere.
"I'm a reactive guy, and I'm going to react with the pulse of our team, which first is what we put on tape and second is the demeanor I feel for how guys are in meetings, how they are in practice, and are you guys getting after it? It goes back to what I started with: Does it mean as much to you and everything to you as it should? And I see better than I hear. You don't need to tell me about it. I'll watch how you carry yourself."
If those things happen to Shanahan's satisfaction, the team's many young players improve and embrace the culture Shanahan and Lynch are trying to build, and a solid foundation is put in place, they will consider 2017 a success, even if the standings don't reflect it.
"I feel like things are going in the right direction," York said. "I feel like the players are buying in to John and Kyle and the things that they're doing. They're genuine people. They are very, very, very direct, and I think that's something that our players respect. If your players respect you, and you can teach them well, and you can put them in a position to be successful, chances are more often than not, you'll be successful, and we just need to keep coming together as a team and know that it's still a young team, it's still a young group of people who haven't had a ton of experience with each other, but the more and more we work together, and the more we trust each other, and the more that we build upon what we've started, we have a chance to do things that we want to do."