The San Francisco 49ers had a Super Bowl championship waiting for them on a silver platter.
The stars were aligned. Finally, someone would add to Steve Young’s success from the early 1990s. Offensive mastermind Kyle Shanahan would be validated as a genius who could actually finish the job with a win on football’s biggest stage. These heavyweight 49ers, rife with All-Pros and even more self-assured bravado about how exceptional they are, would be cemented in history as a winner, one of the truly great teams of their era.
Instead, after losing in overtime in Super Bowl 58, Shanahan’s crew enters the offseason with another gaping chasm of missing success in the middle of its resume. Now, it’s fair to wonder whether this team will ever get over the hump.
I’d be just as speechless as Nick Bosa if I were in his shoes:
You could not have scripted a dream season for the 49ers any better.
Brock Purdy resembled a legitimate franchise quarterback at intermittent points. Perhaps his play isn’t all that sustainable in the long term, but a Mr. Irrelevant earning a Pro Bowl nod and taking his team to the only NFL game in February is the stuff of legend. That does not happen, and it might never happen again.
Brandon Aiyuk made a leap to superstar playmaker, the kind of No. 1 receiver you can run your offense through. Every bit of the workhorse tailback, Christian McCaffrey put the 49ers on his back each week, and he still couldn’t be stopped. There isn’t a better fit for a Shanahan offense. Some disconcerting stepbacks aside, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa comprised a solid core that harassed even the finest of quarterbacks when they were locked in.
The chess pieces were there. The execution wasn’t.
From a macro perspective, the NFC slate of worthy playoff rivals — including the largely also-ran Philadelphia Eagles — was feeble this season. Despite the occasional struggles, San Francisco’s path to the big game could not have been easier on paper. They got every lucky bounce and the fortunate side of the playoff bracket. The Kansas City Chiefs waited for them in the Super Bowl as juggernauts in experience but assuredly the weakest of the Patrick Mahomes era. Against the right opponent, the Chiefs were ripe for the taking.
The 49ers, try as they might say otherwise, were not up to the task. They were bog-standard cannon fodder for the latest chapter in the epic novel known as Patrick Mahomes’ NFL career.
At a certain point, reductive analysis, which can feel like an easy excuse or a cliché, rings true. It’s impossible to ignore what your eyes tell you. In this case, finally casting Kyle Shanahan as a big-game loser is what is more than appropriate. Despite four NFC title game appearances and two Super Bowl berths (with the 49ers), he is the definitive reason this impeccably talented team may never reach the mountaintop.
At least he’s honest about hunkering down with his heartbroken players:
There’s nothing inherently wrong with how Shanahan’s team approached a majority of this game. If anything, it showed that he did learn from past Super Bowl failures.
The 49ers’ offense was balanced, ensuring it never strayed away from McCaffrey too much at the expense of getting Purdy going. Both players, for the most part, did what they wanted against Kansas City’s defense. After a weeks-long showcase of shoddy secondary play, the 49ers’ defense and Warner made it look like Mahomes played in the mud for most of Sunday night. If I had told you, dearest reader, that Travis Kelce would have one target, one catch and one yard well past the halfway point of this Super Bowl, you’d have thought these Chiefs were down by at least four scores.
Kansas City was dead in the water, practically begging to be put out of its misery. Shanahan couldn’t get his team to land the finishing blow.
When it seemed like the 49ers could escape with the win in extra time, it was his thought process with the NFL’s new overtime rules that cost his team a chance at glory:
I’ve never seen a sequence that exemplifies a coach or a team quite as well. What’s wrong with the Shanahan 49ers? Why can’t they get over the hump?
Despite their evident talent and preparation advantages, the 49ers are always thinking about what’s next. Almost to their detriment. They’re so good that they love putting the cart before the horse, shining when everything is going well, calculating what might go wrong because being proactive is so much better than reacting on the fly.
They are above the regular process. They are royalty without owning a castle or a tangible crown. They think they are good enough to worry about what hasn’t happened yet instead of being in the moment.
I can’t sit here and pretend that other NFL coaches wouldn’t have also taken the ball to start Super Bowl overtime. But Shanahan isn’t supposed to be like other overmatched coaches. He’s held to a higher standard, the “golden boy” coach of the sport. His overtime reasoning — thinking both teams would score anyway, so what does it matter who has the ball first? — is what ended up giving the Chiefs the inherent advantage on their game-winning drive. It’s vintage Shanahan math, worrying about the worst-case scenario so much that you end up putting your overconfident team behind the eight-ball anyway.
No wonder he’s been a part of multiple Super Bowl losses as a coach where his team, at one point, held a 10-point lead.
While there might be light cosmetic changes here and there, the 49ers will probably run it back next season. They’ll likely cruise to another NFC West title and be in a strong position for another run to the Super Bowl. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
But from the jump this season, this Super Bowl felt well within their grasp. The way Shanahan and co. wasted the opportunity and let it slip through their fingers makes it seem like this era of 49ers football will finish with a depressing thud.
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