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The 49ers Have the NFL's 9th-Best QB-Coach Combo per Sports Illustrated

This is a very interesting exercise.
Grant Cohn|
Jan 28, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan waves to fans after winning the NFC Championship football game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 28, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan waves to fans after winning the NFC Championship football game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports | Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

This is a very interesting exercise.

Sports Illustrated's Matt Verderame recently ranked all the quarterback-coach combinations in the NFL, and he placed the 49ers' combination of Brock Purdy and Kyle Shanahan ninth among the 32 teams. Individually, he ranked Purdy the 15th-best quarterback and Shanahan the sixth-best head coach.

"Purdy is ranked probably right where he belongs," writes Verderame. "The 49ers will soon tell us their opinion of the former Mr. Irrelevant with Purdy being extension eligible after the 2024 campaign. Meanwhile, he will try to put together another quality year while Shanahan attempts to win a Super Bowl, the only thing he hasn’t accomplished as a coordinator or coach."

Verderame implies that Shanahan is better at his job than Purdy currently is, which might not be true, considering Purdy was the NFL's highest-rated quarterback last season, while Shanahan never has had a no. 1 rated offense in his career. Even his excellent 2016 Falcons offense ranked second in the league. And if he didn't luck into Purdy with the last pick in the 2022 draft, Shanahan probably would have been fired by now because he traded three first-round picks for Trey Lance. Purdy saved Shanahan's job.

And Purdy performed much better in the Super Bowl than Shanahan, considering Purdy didn't choke and Shanahan did. Purdy performed well despite Shanahan getting completely outcoached by Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who shut down Shanahan's run game and generated pressure on Purdy at will.

Purdy is much more important to the 49ers' present and future than Shanahan and it's not even close.

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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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