The Salary Cap Ate the Dynasty

The salary cap arrived in the NFL in 1994, and it was, in retrospect, the beginning of the end for the kind of sustained dominance the 49ers had built. San Francisco managed one more championship that season — Steve Young's masterpiece in Super Bowl XXIX, the one that finally exorcised the ghost of Montana with six touchdown passes — but the economics had already shifted beneath them. The 49ers had been able to stockpile talent in ways that would become mathematically impossible under a hard cap. Free agency bled them slowly. Stars left for bigger contracts elsewhere. The front office made increasingly desperate moves to stay competitive, mortgaging the future for one more run. By the early 2000s, the franchise that had won five championships in fourteen years was losing games in an empty stadium. The dynasty didn't end with a dramatic loss. It ended with a spreadsheet. The salary cap was designed to create parity, and it worked. The 49ers went from the greatest dynasty in modern football to a cautionary tale about what happens when the rules change and the talent walks.