Kyle Shanahan Violated an NFL Rule by Naming Klay Kubiak the 49ers OC

Not a good look.
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan looks on in the first half against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan looks on in the first half against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images / Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images
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Not a good look.

At Kyle Shanahan's end-of-season press conference a few days ago, he proudly announced that he would be promoting Klay Kubiak from passing game specialist to offensive coordinator. Turns out, Shanahan violated NFL rules by making this announcement, because teams can't promote coaches internally to coordinator positions without first conducting an official set of interviews with multiple candidates.

Oops.

What a silly rule to break, especially considering that Kubiak'ls promotion is ceremonial. He won't call play next season -- Kyle Shanahan will still do that. Kubiak primarily will get a new title and a raise. So now the 49ers have to conduct a bunch of phony interviews before they give out a phony promotion to Kubiak. What a charade.

You'd think Shanahan would know this rule, because he has been in the NFL since 2008, plus his dad was an NFL coach for decades. If anyone should know the league's minutiae, it's Shanahan. But he's the one who seemingly didn't know the overtime rules in the Super Bowl -- how else do you explain him winning the coin toss and electing to give Kansas City the final possession of the game?

It's unclear if the league will punish the 49ers for this rule violation. Last year, the 49ers forfeited a fifth-round pick due to a cleric error they committed in 2020. So they've been overlooking critical details for years and these oversights are beginning to cost them.

Lock in, Kyle.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.