Charlotte 49ers aim to climb out of the FBS cellar in Tim Albin’s second season

The Charlotte 49ers begin a new preseason cycle with one clear priority: avoid a repeat of the stretch that defined their 2025 season. Under Tim Albin in his first year as head coach, Charlotte finished 1-11, and the program’s lone victory required a late, game-winning touchdown with about 90 seconds remaining against FCS Monmouth, according to Yahoo Sports’ preseason preview.

The larger context behind that record matters for how Charlotte will measure progress. Yahoo notes that across FBS in 2025, 132 of 136 teams won multiple games, leaving only a small group in the “did not win multiple” category. Charlotte was among those programs, a marker that the 49ers did not merely stumble late, but struggled to create consistent results across the full calendar.

For a second-year coaching staff, the offseason is often judged less by optimism and more by whether the team tightens the essentials. That typically means sharper execution in high-leverage moments, less volatility early in games, and improvements that show up even when the opponent plays well. Charlotte’s 2025 profile, as described by the preseason report, raises the bar for those fundamentals because the record suggests problems were widespread rather than isolated.

In the preview, Albin’s second season is framed as an opportunity to change the program’s trajectory. A second year can bring a clearer identity, with the staff’s system better understood and players more fully aligned to roles and expectations. When a team finishes with a one-win season, the work is also cultural, because habits formed during losing can linger unless the staff actively redraws how the team prepares and responds.

The American Athletic Conference setting adds another layer to the pressure. Charlotte’s path to recovery is not just about getting better, but about competing reliably against a league schedule designed to punish inconsistency. If Charlotte’s results improve only in flashes, the standings picture in a conference-heavy year is unlikely to follow, since every opponent brings a week-to-week opportunity to widen gaps in talent and game management.

The 2025 win over Monmouth illustrates both the promise and the problem the program must address. The ability to finish with a late scoring drive is a positive indicator for any offense, but the report’s description of a late touchdown being the difference also underscores how far Charlotte was from “comfortable” outcomes. In a preseason evaluation, that is precisely the type of detail coaches and analysts watch for: does late-game competence translate into earlier game control, sustaining drives, and stronger starts so the season is not decided by narrow margins late in the fourth quarter.

Going forward, the preseason storylines for Charlotte will likely revolve around whether Albin’s staff can turn the program’s second-year foundation into repeatable performance. The bar is straightforward and public: in a conference race, multiple wins are not only a scoreboard goal, they are proof that training camp and game planning are translating into the kind of weekly improvements the 2025 results did not show.

Whether Charlotte can move out of the bottom tier will be tested by how quickly the team becomes steadier from series to series. The second season label carries promise, but the league does not reward effort alone. By the end of the next stretch of games, the 49ers will be looking for evidence that their one-win year was the starting point of a rebuild, not a forecast of what comes next.