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Will the 49ers Fire Kyle Shanahan if they Miss the Playoffs Next Year?

Have they learned from the Harbaugh mistake?
Grant Cohn|
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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San Francisco 49ers

10 years ago, the 49ers gutted their roster AND fired head coach Jim Harbaugh in the same offseason.

This year, the 49ers have gutted their roster but haven't fired Kyle Shanahan. Does that mean they learned from the Harbaugh mistake? And is Shanahan on the hot seat?

In retrospect, firing Harbaugh and THEN gutting the roster set up the next two head coaches for failure. Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly never had a chance, and Kyle Shanahan needed three years to build up the roster from practically scratch.

So when the 49ers decided they needed to rebuild their roster, they could have fired Kyle Shanahan. But they couldn't have hired a good head coach to replace him because they're rebuilding.

So now Shanahan has to stick around for the rebuild. He has to clean up the mess he made by trading three first-round picks plus a third for Trey Lance and insisting on signing Brandon Aiyuk for $30 million per season. And he has to win.

The 49ers are paying Shanahan $14 million per season -- more than any other head coach in North American sports who hasn't won a championship. If he's such a great head coach, if he's such a valuable commodity, he should be able to win with a young team. He should be able to coach up the rookies and second-year players like Sean McVay does with the Rams.

If the 49ers win a playoff game next season, Shanahan's job should be safe. But if he loses in the first round or fails to reach the playoffs entirely, he could get replaced and the 49ers could find someone better suited to coach a young team.

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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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