Dieter Kurtenbach: 49ers preseason is over. Why are there still so many questions?

NFL training camps are supposed to provide clarity.

For five weeks in the sweltering Santa Clara heat, with three little Thursday-night jaunts in NFL stadiums, coaches evaluate, players compete, and, in theory, the best possible football team emerges from the chaos of 90-plus guys crashing into each other.

Except that didn’t happen for the 49ers this year.

No, the Niners just wrapped up a month-plus of camp with a preseason win against the Raiders, and yet, somehow, it seems as if we know less about this team today than we did when players first rolled into town in late July.

Needless to say, that’s inauspicious.

Kyle Shanahan doesn’t know who his starting left guard is. He doesn’t know who should be lining up at defensive tackle next to Osa Odighizuwa to start Week 1. And right now, the team’s front office is about to make life an absolute nightmare for its travel staff before boarding a marathon flight to Australia.

Sunday brings the NFL’s mandatory 53-man cut-down deadline, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it signals finality or resolution. Sunday won’t bring answers; it will only bring administrative sleight of hand. Expect a dizzying circus of procedural chicanery. Vested veterans will be “cut” for an afternoon solely to sneak injured or uninspiring youngsters through the roster backdoor, only so they can be stashed on IR or quietly dropped out once the initial waiver-wire dust settles and no one else has room to add them.

But even the NFL’s version of a shell game can’t hide this team’s real problems — ones that were supposed to be solved through training and competition this summer.

Start at left guard. Shanahan spent August practically begging someone — anyone — to seize the gig. Robert Jones, Connor Colby, Austen Pleasants; please, someone take the job. Nobody did, and now the Niners are likely to start with a rookie who began camp with the plan to take a redshirt year — Carver Willis — at a position he didn’t play in college.

Maybe.

“It’s close to being decided, and it needs to be close,” Shanahan said of the left guard battle earlier in the week, clinging to some semblance of optimism. By Thursday night, that optimism evaporated into pure, weary resignation: “It’s going to go down to the wire. … We’ve got to pick one for Week 1, so hopefully one of them will separate themselves. Week 1 is just Week 1, the competition never stops.”

Allow me to translate that coach-speak: We don’t have a clue, because we don’t love any of the options.

Here’s the problem: When an offensive line competition drags into September, you don’t have a healthy position battle. You have a liability.

The rot doesn’t stop there.

The reliable defensive tackle depth behind Odighizuwa is a ghost town. Alfred Collins and CJ West were so thoroughly listless on Thursday night — and for Collins, all camp — that they practically shoved undrafted free agent James Thompson into a starting gig by default. Thompson has been the revelation of camp, sure, but to work your way up from the fourth string to the first string in the course of a month requires a lot of help.

And then there’s receiver: There the scramble for the final roster spots looked less like may-the-best-man-win and more like guys tripping over their own cleats. Jacob Cowing and Jordan Watkins both had golden opportunities to slam the door and guarantee themselves a spot on the 53; both faceplanted. Yet they might still make the roster solely because Christian Kirk went down on Day 1 and is likely to start the season on injured reserve

It all leaves the door wide open for John Lynch to scour the waiver wire or kick the tires on Cleveland cast-offs like Cedric Tillman.

I personally think a day-long flight to Australia is a great time to get to know your new teammates.

But Cleveland castoffs? That can’t be good for the overall roster. (Though, I will say, I like the Tillman fit in San Francisco.)

At safety, Malik Mustapha has been sidelined all month, while Ashton Davis’ audition against the Raiders made you want to look away. Unless an external rescue arrives via trade or free agency, the Niners’ safety depth chart is essentially a wish and a prayer that the starters never need to grab a breather.

I could go on, but suffice it to say: Too few young guys stepped up. Too many bodies hit the training room. Too many veterans spent camp on pitch counts.

It lays bare the terrifying, recurring reality of this franchise: the entire 2026 season rests squarely on the fragile shoulders of six aging superstars: Christian McCaffrey, Trent Williams, George Kittle, Mike Evans, Dre Greenlaw and Nick Bosa.

Are they elite? Absolutely. Can any sane person bank on all six surviving a 17-game slate unscathed? Not a chance.

That isn’t a sustainable team-building philosophy. It’s a lottery ticket. And those rarely hit.

Sure, if all six stars are dialed in and healthy, the 49ers can steamroll anyone on the planet.

But if even two of them go down? The whole house of cards starts to look pretty wobbly, even with nice depth at running back and perhaps linebacker.

And that’s before mentioning that Kittle is already a coin-flip for Week 1 and Bosa hasn’t practiced in weeks.

It’s not as if Brock Purdy and Fred Warner didn’t miss time last year, too.

This is where a team with serious young depth would come in handy. Do the Niners have that? At a few positions, perhaps. But not at enough of them.

So what did August teach us?

We learned the 49ers have once again constructed a squad with a penthouse ceiling and a subterranean floor. Stop me if you’ve heard that one before.

And Sunday’s cuts won’t solve that problem — they will only clarify it.

The Niners will use that deadline to simply trigger another few days of roster gymnastics to kick the can down the road.

At some point, they’ll have to file a passenger manifest and board the plane. I doubt two or three more practices will allow everything to fall into place before that, though.

And while the Niners might be heading down under in lie-flat seats, make no mistake: this team is in an exceptionally uncomfortable position going into the 2026 campaign.