With mediocrity immediately behind them, the season opener just a week away, and a history of Super Bowl championships to defend, I buttonholed right guard Randy Cross, the philosopher prince of the 49ers offensive line to pose the inquiry that then and there truly vexed the Niner Faithful.

“Aren’t you concerned?”

With a sympathetic smile, Cross shook his head knowingly. “They don’t call it the exhibition season for nothing,” he said. “They don’t put anything we’ve done so far on the back of our bubblegum cards. Next week, that’s when it matters.”

We resurrect this memory today in response to an otherwise splendid state-of-the-race article in Wednesday’s Tampa Bay Times, in which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the presumed Republican presidential candidate, catches flak for, well, catching flak.

First came Ron DeSanctimonious. Then came RINO Ron, depicting Gov. Ron DeSantis as a Republican In Name Only. Over the weekend, the world got Ron Dukakis, conflating DeSantis with Democratic presidential loser Michael Dukakis.

Week after week, former President Donald Trump tries out new nicknames for his one-time protégé and chief rival for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nod. They’re part of a growing number of slings and setbacks that, for the first time in months, have made DeSantis’s political future look a bit wobbly.

This breathless — and clearly ephemeral — description is couched in a substantially meaningful fact: DeSantis has not publicly declared he’s in the contest. Yes, he’s performed a bit of primary-state barnstorming linked to the publication of his book, The Courage to Be Free, as well as Florida’s fascinating law-enforcement recruitment program. In those much-ballyhooed stops he’s advanced arguments about why America should be more like Florida — segments of which will slot comfortably into stump speeches — so it’s not like DeSantis hasn’t entered the wink-wink stage of his probable campaign for the White House.

And he’s headed next month to Israel, so there’s that.

But the notion that, at this point, Team DeSantis should be concerned about their man’s poll slippage amounts to full-blown silliness. The most recent ex-president may be getting his usual bratty jollies fabricating shortcomings and anecdotal fantasies about America’s Governor, and if there is attendance erosion in DeSantis’ polls, that’s what makes exhibition season lots of meaningless fun.

More from the Times:

Justin Sayfie, a veteran Florida Republican lobbyist who worked informally with former Gov. Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, said much of the polling and critiques of DeSantis at this point are only visible to the plugged-in political class, while most voters won’t be paying attention for months.

“People are already handicapping a candidate who’s not in the race yet,” he said. “Nothing that happens in March or April that millions of people don’t know about will make any difference in the contest.”

More significant, even now, is that the Republican race involves just two rivals. DeSantis vs. Trump. Trump vs. DeSantis. Nobody else, announced or otherwise, is a blip on the radar. That arrangement, should it hold, makes the Republican nomination DeSantis’ to lose.

Imagine the 2016 GOP primary contested under similar circumstances. While the nomination was getting sorted in the earliest months, Trump was never much more than a 33% plurality favorite. Trump’s triumph had more to do with the failure of more traditional Republicans to coalesce around a solitary alternative than his personal appeal.

Of significance just now, before stuff starts qualifying for the back of DeSantis’ bubblegum card, is the fresh reassessment of the Trump years such as the one provided Tuesday during a bookselling visit to South Florida by former Attorney General Bill Barr, America’s top law enforcement official for 22 tumultuous months.

Barr praised the panoply of Trump policies, but his penchant for “acting like a jerk” cost him re-election.

“He is a petty man,” Barr said. “In a football game, he would rather lose the game if it allowed him to indulge some vengeance or some feeling or getting even with another person. He would put his own satisfaction ahead of winning the damn game.”

Compare Trump’s unrestricted sniping and peevishness — and never forgetting a slight, real or imagined — to DeSantis, Barr said.

“I have to say I’m not endorsing any opponent of Trump,” Barr said. “I’ve made clear I think we need a new face in 2024. But I’m not saying who. But I have to say that I was very impressed with the way Governor DeSantis handled it,” Barr said about the governor and COVID.

DeSantis immersed himself in “the substance and read everything and understood what was going on,” Barr said, adding that in his view the governor “made tough decisions, withstood the fire … and he wasn’t flip-flopping around.”

In this, Barr echoes what, in a likelihood, a critical mass of Republican primary voters will crave: Bedrock conservative values and, indeed, Trump-flavored policies without the nonstop Trumpian dramatics.

Wait’ll that good stuff becomes officially affixed to the DeSantis campaign bubblegum card.