The 2023 San Francisco 49ers were, by most metrics, a dream team. This season, they had multiple All-Pros on offense, from left tackle to fullback to running back to tight end to wide receiver. This is without mentioning the best middle linebacker in the sport, a top-tier pass rusher and one of the league’s best interior linemen.
Their quarterback is an actual dream, a player taken last in the draft who led the league in most statistical categories and yet was still skipped over for All-Pro and MVP recognition.
Despite all this talent, San Francisco’s playoff run looked poor. In games against Green Bay and Detroit, they were largely outplayed and arguably should’ve lost both. Alas, they won, they made the Super Bowl and I’m writing this column.
Coach Kyle Shanahan, perhaps the game’s greatest play caller, would get a third chance at the Super Bowl. His previous two tries did not end well.
Up 28-3, he squandered it in perhaps the greatest collapse in the history of football. To this day, Brady and the Patriots’ impossible comeback is my favorite football game.
Up 10 in the fourth quarter, he butchered another one. Kansas City won their first Super Bowl in the Mahomes era.
He managed these failings not through unfortunate events or refball but through pure coaching incompetence, the stubborn refusal to adjust, a lack of situational awareness and poor clock management.
Now seven years since that legendary Falcons collapse in Super Bowl 51 and four since that 10 point fumble against this same Chiefs core, he would get a chance to show the world he had learned from these humbling experiences and grown wiser from it.
Only, he hasn’t.
A more perfect draw of the cards could not have been had in this game for Kyle.
Kansas City’s offense no-showed for almost an entire two quarters. They were out of sync and their offensive line was under siege. San Francisco had a long drive to start the game and sustained drives throughout the first half that kept Mahomes and crew off the field.
The Chiefs would manage a field goal toward the end of half. San Francisco had 23 seconds and two timeouts.
Shanahan elected for a McCaffrey run and a walk into the locker room up 10-3.
This is an abomination of clock management. To not even attempt to score, to feel complacent and comfortable up one score in a game you’ve dominated? Bewildering, to be polite and disrespectful of what we all know Kansas City can do.
Mahomes and this same Chiefs team once tied a playoff game in 13 seconds. That was a different unit and team build, sure but challenging Mahomes’ greatness, Reid’s mind, the pedigree of that organization, is arrogant and foolish.
Too many times in his career, Shanahan has taken his foot off the gas pedal and settled. Settlers do not win championships.
Other times, Shanahan can’t seem to understand when to take it off.
Kyle Gonna Kyle
The second half began with a Chiefs possession. Pacheco would fumble on the first snap (KC would recover) and Mahomes would throw a poor interception to end the drive. Now a short distance from establishing themselves, a golden opportunity for Shanahan and company was present: a shot at momentum and at minimum, a chance at recapturing their 10-point lead.
They went three-and-out.
The wisest way to beat Patrick Mahomes is to keep him off the field, which means sustaining drives and draining clock on offense.
In the second half, Shanahan decided to minimize the best running back in football, Christian McCaffrey. This after his All-Pro tight end ended the first half with zero targets.
Shanahan’s bread and butter is under center, play-action passing paired with a consistent zone read run game but in the sport’s biggest exhibits, Shanahan elected to abandon that for shotgun, often empty, formations where his offense statistically performs worse than possibly any other.
Purdy is not a gunslinger and even if he was, playing gunslinger football against two All-Pro caliber corners in Trent McDuffie and L’Jarius Sneed and an All-Pro pass rusher in defensive tackle Chris Jones is really, really dumb but Shanahan enjoys making situations as hard as possible for his players.
Come playoff time, the game’s best play designer turns into Arthur Smith, a man who doesn’t understand personnel management. Jauan Jennings was the 49ers best vertical threat in the game. His All-Pro receiver, Brandon Aiyuk, had three receptions. Kittle got a whole two catches for four yards at game’s end.
Kansas City had the league’s best defense this season but often got bullied in the run game. “Wow, Kyle, I was just looking at the roster sheet and it says here that San Francisco has an All-Pro left tackle, an All-Pro fullback and the league’s best running back and offensive player of the year. Maybe we should utilize these three players and run the damn ball.”
But no. Shanahan insisted on shotgun and incomplete passes. No explosive plays happened in the pass game aside from an extremely bizarre WR pass from Jennings, a ball that lingered in the air for a calendar year, somehow didn’t get picked off and was taken by McCaffrey for a score. A deep ball into the end zone was knocked away by McDuffie in 1-on-1 coverage on Deebo Samuel and another end zone shot was missed after the throw was disrupted by a Chris Jones pressure, that All-Pro defensive tackle I was talking about earlier.
With the 2-minute warning passed at the end of the game and a third-and-four, San Francisco was a first down away from eliminating Kansas City’s final two timeouts and kicking a go-ahead field goal with little time remaining, if any.
Kansas City would blitz. Running the ball was the right call. At worst, it would kill one of Reid’s stoppages. At best, it would punish the blitz and get the first down, essentially icing the game.
Shanahan called shotgun. Incomplete. San Fran would kick and Mahomes would systematically drive down the field for the tying score to send the game to overtime.
Now in the extra period, another third and medium. McCaffrey had been the cog that had delivered San Francisco to this position.
Shanahan called shotgun. Incomplete. San Fran would kick, Mahomes would drive down the field for the winning score.
For all of Shanahan’s success, all of his schemes, designs and talents, these are the only numbers that matter:
28-3
20-10
10-0
Those are the three Super Bowl leads he has blown, all back-to-back.
After a third failure and second in the Bay Area, Shanahan’s seat should be getting warm if not hot. Shanahan is coming scarily close to Mike McCarthy, another coach who struggles with clock management and situational awareness.
As Sean McVay continues to evolve in the NFC West, Shanahan appears to be regressing, failing to learn from his greatest failures. All three of these Super Bowl defeats came from a refusal to run the ball. Perhaps that is why Super Bowl Sunday felt underwhelming this year, a season finale I’ve already seen before.
The night should be remembered for Mahomes’ second half magic and theatrics, the Chiefs’ back-to-back trophy run, Reid’s continued success but the prevailing story line, the tale that will likely fade as time passes, the message on the other side of the page, is the thread of Shanahan’s shenaningans, the chapter of a man who repeats his mistakes at the podium and won’t learn his lesson, who abandons his identity and talents when the heat is hottest for lesser fair.
Because unlike many in the sports realm, Shanahan is not bullish or an old-school football mind tethered to the principles of the past. He is creative, in some ways revolutionary, artistic even but there is clearly something significant lacking with Shanahan. Maybe that something will appear in time but now seven years since that infamous 28-3, Kyle is still fucking around and finding out.
For all his brilliance, Shanahan’s greatest adversary is himself, from his hatred of the run game in big moments, his lacking awareness in not just the situational sense but in his evaluation of prospects (not enough has been said about the Trey Lance debacle) and his understanding of his opponent and his own personnel.
As great as Mahomes was in that second half last night, the biggest reason Kansas City will be hosting a championship parade is Kyle Shanahan’s persistent need to stand in his own way.
If San Francisco has the type of season they had this year in 2024 and Shanahan once again is responsible for an early playoff exit, a serious discussion needs to be had. Detroit’s Ben Johnson will once again be available. There are plenty of bright NFL minds who could accomplish great things with this All-Star team.
I’m sure this will be an unpopular take. Shanahan owns his division and has a dominating record against McVay and he’s made multiple NFC Championships and Super Bowls but context matters and is often more important than the final result. Maybe I’m the dumb one (entirely possible) but it sure feels like the 49ers are Michael Phelps during the regular season. They turn into a talented college swimmer after a hangover come playoffs, skilled enough to win sometimes but never seemingly at their best. Multiple players after Sunday’s Bowl said they were unaware of the new overtime rules. That’s coaching.
In all three Super Bowls, Shanahan was running the ball away from winning. If he would simply embrace his own identity, he would be a three-time Super Bowl champion and on his way to Canton.
Instead, he’s now known as one of the greatest Super Bowl chokers in NFL history and his Hall candidacy is very much in question despite all he’s brought to the sport.
Shanahan is capable of great things but the Bay Area cannot wait much longer for him to figure it out. The 49ers already missed a window with the tandem of new Hall of Famer Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman. They missed the Garoppolo window. They cannot afford to miss this window of Bosa, Warner, Kittle, Deebo, Aiyuk, CMC, Trent, Juszczyk and so many more.
Because Sunday, the 49ers were not a quarterback away. They were not an offensive line or a defense away. They were not even a “Patrick Mahomes not on the other sideline” away.
They were a coach away.
wordsofwistim 