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CBS Sports Ranks 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan 7th Among NFL Head Coaches

Kyle Shanahan is the most controversial head coach in the NFL.
Grant Cohn|
Apr 1, 2025; Palm Beach, FL, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan answers questions from the media during the NFL Annual League Meeting at The Breakers. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-Imagn Images
Apr 1, 2025; Palm Beach, FL, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan answers questions from the media during the NFL Annual League Meeting at The Breakers. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-Imagn Images | Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

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San Francisco 49ers

Kyle Shanahan is the most controversial head coach in the NFL.

Some people think he's the best offensive mind in football -- better than Andy Reid and Sean McVay. Just look at the work Shanahan has done with non-elite quarterbacks such as Jimmy Garoppolo and Brock Purdy.

Other people think Shanahan is a glorified offensive coordinator who has too much power and is largely responsible for the 49ers' awful drafts from 2021 to 2023.

CBS Sports comes down somewhere in the middle, ranking Shanahan seventh among the NFL's 32 head coaches.

"Depending on the year, Shanahan's either a schematic genius on the precipice of glory or the dejected face of an injury-ravaged lineup," writes CBS Sports' Cody Benjamin. "No other coach, after all, has guided four NFC title-game appearances in five years, while also overseeing four losing seasons. It's pretty simple here: If his toys are sturdy, he can draw up a shootout with the best of them. Robert Saleh's return as a right-hand man on defense should also help, though Shanahan's also got a conservative bent in the biggest moments."

I disagree that Shanahan has a "conservative bent" in the biggest moments. His issue is quite the opposite. In all three of his Super Bowl collapses, he abandoned his running game while leading in the second half.

Shanahan's offense is a run-first scheme. When he's at his best, he runs the ball as much as possible. When he panics under pressure, he turns to his passing game.

That's why Shanahan is so complicated. He's good enough to take a team to the Super Bowl even with a mediocre quarterback. But when he gets to the Super Bowl, he's the reason his team doesn't win it.

He's like a tragic Greek mythological figure.

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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.

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