49ers' Deebo Samuel opens up about latest playoff heartbreak

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy vowed in a social media post shared on Tuesday that he and his teammates will "keep the faith" following the club's overtime loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII.

Dual-threat offensive weapon Deebo Samuel took a different approach when he acknowledged during a recent appearance on the FanDuel TV "Up & Adams" program that "it’s just so heartbreaking" to be part of a franchise that's lost on Super Bowl Sunday twice across five years. 

"It’s kind of hard, because basically our job is football, so it’s just like, 'Alright, let’s use this as motivation where you get back in the lab just to put yourself in a position and try to do your best to get back,'" Samuel explained during the segment, per Josh Alper of Pro Football Talk and Kevin Patra of the NFL's website. "People just say there’s always next year, but I heard that in 2019 and it took four more years to get where we’re at. So, it’s not that easy as people think to get to the Super Bowl. It takes everything. It takes me, the coaches, the people upstairs, you bring people in to help. For everything to play out right, you’re not just gonna snap your hands and be back in the Super Bowl again." 

Samuel joined the 49ers as a second-round draft pick in the spring of 2019 and has been part of squads that lost two Super Bowls and two conference championship games. Kyle Shanahan has been Samuel's only NFL head coach, and Grant Cohn of Fan Nation's All 49ers website was among those who wondered following Super Bowl LVIII if Shanahan may eventually need a fresh start elsewhere to escape his history of postseason disappointments with San Francisco. 

Samuel, meanwhile, signed a three-year contract extension in July 2022 and sounds confident the 49ers can make another run at immortality beginning this coming September. 

"If you look at it, we still got 90, 95 percent of the guys that's coming back," Samuel added. "I got all the faith in the world in this team that we have. It's cool and all, four out of five NFC championships, making two Super Bowls, that's all cool, fine and dandy, but it's not cool when you're not the team at the end of the year holding the Lombardi. Everybody on this team has one goal, and I hope we set out and we get it done."

As of Wednesday morning, DraftKings Sportsbook listed the 49ers as the betting favorites at +550 odds to win Super Bowl LIX next February. The Chiefs were second on the list at +600.