Why 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan's Stock is Down

When he lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs the first time, Jimmy Garoppolo was the scapegoat even though Shanahan was the one who decided to put the game in Garoppolo's hands.

Grant Cohn | May 20, 2024

Feb 5, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan speaks during Super / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

Kyle Shanahan is a good coach, but people are beginning to realize why he isn't a champion.

Shanahan has been to three Super Bowls -- one as a coordinator and two as a head coach. He went with three different quarterbacks -- Matt Ryan, Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy. He had fourth-quarter leads in all three games. And he lost all of them. If a quarterback went to three Super Bowls and blew leads to lose all of them, you'd call him a choker. Well, that's what Shanahan is. A choker.

When he lost the Super Bowl to the Chiefs the first time, Garoppolo was the scapegoat even though Shanahan was the one who decided to put the game in Garoppolo's hands. Still, Garoppolo took most of the blame for the 49ers losing that game. If Garoppolo had merely hit a wide-open Emmanuel Sanders for a deep touchdown in the fourth quarter, the 49ers would have won according to some fans and analysts.

But now the 49ers quarterback is Brock Purdy, and he's better than Garoppolo. Purdy didn't play poorly in the Super Bowl -- you can't blame him for the loss. He didn't make any major mistakes.

Meanwhile, Kyle Shanahan got outcoached in the divisional round by Matt LaFleur. Then he got outcoached in the NFC Championship by Dan Campbell. And then finally he got outcoached in the Super Bowl by Chiefs Andy Reid and Steve Spagnuolo. And everyone knows it, including, I'd imagine, the 49ers players.

Now Shanahan has to change that perception and prove he's not a choker.

Published May 20, 2024

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.