Steve Young has been disapointed by the San Francisco 49ers' 2016 season and is pessimistic about things changing in the future as long as ownership and upper management continue their current paths.

Young was sharp in his criticism of the York family.

“In the NFL, you don’t have to win to make money,” Young said on KNBR. “The greatest growth equity value teams are not necessarily the winners. In fact, if you think about the 49ers in the last 15 years since the Yorks owned the team, you’re talking about equity values that went from — I’m just rough now — $200 million in 2000 to well over maybe $2 billion. It’s like 10 times or more. It’s like Silicon Valley. That’s one of the great success stories of any tech business anywhere.

“That’s (the York’s) A-game. Their equity value in the team is their A game, it’s what drives them. It’s what drives most of the owners. It’s what matters. It’s what they think about. It’s what they talk about. And the B-game, is whether we win some games. It’s not that you don’t want to, or you don’t really want to, or it’s not really important. It’s just not the A-game. And so when it’s not the A-game, that’s the biggest issue with the NFL, is that success doesn’t track to success on the field. So you’re not held accountable.

“So no matter what we decide to do here, and my opinion is when you’re 1-12 or 1-13 of if we end up 1-15, to me by definition, everybody out to the parking lot. Every living thing out to the parking lot. And nobody gets back in unless you can prove you’re part of the solution. I mean everybody. That’s a tough thing to do because you might have to start over in all kinds of ways.”

Young said ownership has to decide if they want to change enough to put a winner on the field.

“And the calculus is, should we start over? Should we wipe the place out? Should we leave Trent (Baalke) and maybe do a coach? But that doesn’t look right because we kept a coaching carousel, so let Chip (Kelly) come. Who’s going to be with Chip? Because it’s all this calculus has to go on. And it really, as an ex-player who’s been around a long time, it’s frustrating to watch. Because it’s never true merit, true everyone in the parking lot and you literally are barred unless you can prove your value that makes this thing move forward.”