Kyle Shanahan: A Realistic View of His Time in San Francisco

Kyle Shanahan is viewed as one of the best head coaches in the NFL. He has revolutionized offense in the NFL as many coaches in his tree have gone on to get head coaching positions. However, his high-powered offenses have only resulted in one Super Bowl appearance in his six years with the team. Detractors say he is overrated. Supporters praise his offensive mind. In order to view his time in San Francisco properly, we have to look at the whole picture.

Kyle Shanahan By The Numbers

The counting stats for Shanahan’s coaching tenure don’t jump off the page. In six years, Shanahan is 52-46 which translates to a .531 winning percentage. To give context, Chuck Pagano, Frank Reich, and Jason Garrett all have better-winning percentages than Shanahan. While we praise his offense, he has only fielded a top-ten offense twice. Three times his offenses have ranked in the bottom third of the league in points.

To be fair, Shanahan inherited a team that was pretty void of talent. Brian Hoyer, C.J. Beathard, and Nick Mullens started a good majority of games for the 49ers when Shanahan got there. The team didn’t have a lot of their key defensive pieces but was able to draft them with the top picks they earned. No matter how good of a coach a person is, roster talent matters. Still, the best coaches are often able to get the most out of their rosters no matter how poor.

Impressive Coaching Tree

There is no denying that Shanahan’s schemes have had an impact on the league. Front offices like the scheme that he runs and want to get someone to run that scheme for their franchise. Notable names from this tree are Sean McVay, Zac Taylor, Mike McDaniel, and Matt LaFleur. These are just the offensive coaches. Brandon Staley, Robert Saleh, and DeMeco Ryans all come out of this tree as well. Whatever you think of Kyle Shanahan, you cannot deny that he has had a huge impact on where the league is going.

Hard To Win In The NFL

Kyle Shanahan is the poster child for the statement, “It’s hard to win in the NFL”. Things happen with last year being a prime example. They made it to the NFC Championship game before Brock Purdy went down with an injury. When the backup got concussed, they were left without a quarterback. Not even the greatest coaches in NFL history can coach a team to victory without the most important position on the field.

This isn’t the only unlucky break in Shanahan’s coaching tenure. Nick Bosa suffered a major injury one season. Jimmy Garoppolo suffered many injuries as well. It took an all-time comeback by Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs to deny a Super Bowl. It is hard to win in this league. Teams need a lot to go right and Shanahan has had a lot of things go wrong.

The Trey Lance Situation

I have to mention this because this has a chance to go down as one of the biggest draft mistakes in NFL history. To be fair, I don’t know how much Kyle Shanahan influenced this decision or whether it was mostly GM John Lynch. What I do know is that Shanahan had difficulty developing him. Some of this, again, is not his fault. Lance chipped a bone in his finger in his rookie season and broke his ankle the next. It’s hard to develop a person when they can’t throw.

Still, I have a hard time believing that Kyle Shanahan couldn’t at least show some improvement with Lance, especially this offseason. Maybe it isn’t his fault at all. Maybe Lance is really not a good player and his limited playing time dupe us into thinking he could be an NFL talent. However, if Shanahan is the offensive guru that everyone claims him to be, Lance needs to show something.

Kyle Shanahan: A Complete View

Shanahan is an innovator who is going to win in this league. He is still a very young coach and now has all of this experience under his belt. He has shown he can create a dynamic offense and at some point, you would like to think they might be lucky on the injury front. Great coaches like Andy Reid and Bill Belichick didn’t see success right away either. It’s fair to criticize Kyle Shanahan but it is impossible to not recognize what he has done for the game of football.