When evaluating the best coaches in the NFL, Kyle Shanahan’s name always comes towards the top of the list. He is one of the most brilliant offensive minds that exists in today’s modern NFL, and his ability to design an offense might be unparalleled in today’s game. His teams have struggled because of injuries, but he’s gained an almost unimpeachable status, where no one is allowed to discuss the fact that he currently has a 31-39 record as a Head Coach. And while its true that his teams have constantly had bad injury luck, there are legitimate areas of criticism when it comes to Shanahan's coaching abilities. Staring at a 2-4 record and faced with a possible fourth losing season in five years, it seems fair to question Kyle Shanahan’s overall abilities as a head coach.
One of the weird things about coaching in the NFL is that in order to get a promotion, you have to exhibit proficiency in areas that have little to do with the job to which you are getting promoted. When a Quarterbacks Coach shows a great ability to develop Quarterbacks, he gets promoted to Offensive Coordinator, but no one has any idea whether he can design an offense or call plays, they just know that he was good at something else and hope that it will carry over. The same can be said when a Coordinator makes the leap to head coach. They can be brilliant at running an offense or a defense, but upon hiring no one has any idea whether they can keep that design while checking in on the other side of the ball, whether they can manage a game, whether they can build a culture, whether they can evaluate players or any other parts of the Head Coach job description in which the former Coordinator has no experience. This is what is really curious about Kyle Shanahan. I still think that he is a good coach who provides a net positive to his team because of his abilities in running an offense, but he hasn’t shown the ability to be a good coach in any area of the job description that is different from what he was doing as an Offensive Coordinator. While Shanahan certainly shouldn’t be on the hot seat, it may be time to wonder whether he is actually a great coach, or simply an overqualified Offensive Coordinator.
Upon taking the job with the 49ers, Shanahan was given a major say in player personnel decisions along with his duties as coach. Along with General Manager John Lynch, Shanahan was given the opportunity to build a team as he saw fit. Unfortunately, he has continuously missed on big investments, and then has doubled down and exacerbated those mistakes. The first thing he did was try to get a quarterback, so he traded for Jimmy Garoppolo. Garoppolo performed well enough that year, but Shanahan decided that he saw enough in five starts to give him what was at the time the largest contract in football history. That of course wound up not working out, and the 49ers were left this offseason looking for a new quarterback in the draft. They were sitting at the 12th pick and wanted to move up to draft a Quarterback. They gave up that pick along with two future firsts and a third to the Dolphins to move up to three. According to reports, they did not know who they were taking at the time which was a massive misstep. The only way you made that move is if there is someone you are absolutely in love with because otherwise, you shouldn’t be giving up that type of capital, especially because they were guaranteed to have a Quarterback sitting there at 12. They wound up taking Trey Lance, and while it is too early to judge the pick as a whole, he is clearly the least ready of the five. Looking back on it, wouldn't you rather Mac Jones and two future firsts? This seems like it could very well wind up being the second straight time that Shanahan makes a massive investment in a Quarterback who doesn’t live up to his projected value.
Quarterback is not the only position where Shanahan has missed on massive investments. During the 2020 NFL Draft, Shanahan moved up from 31 to 25 while giving up a fourth and a fifth to draft Brandon Aiyuk, who the 49ers reportedly had rated as the top receiver on their board ahead of guys like CeeDee Lamb, Jerry Jeudy, and Justin Jefferson. After putting up a productive rookie season, Aiyuk has mysteriously disappeared from the fold this year. According to Shanahan, he was simply beat out by other guys in camp, but that’s not how the NFL works. While I appreciate the notion of everyone having to earn their job, you have to give that type of investment the chance to prosper, and it doesn’t even make sense that one training camp would be enough to lose Aiyuk his job after being one of the best receivers in football over the second half of last year. A similar situation happened in this draft with Trey Sermon when they gave the Rams two fourth-rounders to move up to the third to go and draft him. This is especially a big investment for a running back, considering that you rarely see a team give up assets to move up and draft a player at the position. Similar to Aiyuk, Sermon was beaten out in camp and hasn’t seen much game action this year. All in all, that means that in the past three drafts the 49ers have given up 4 first-rounders, a third-rounder, three fourth-rounders, and a fifth-rounder for three skill players that are currently riding the bench.
That massive disconnect in investment vs output begs the question of whether Kyle Shanahan does not understand the concept of player value and what it means to make a major investment in somebody, or whether he is simply a bad player evaluator. I think it is a little bit of both, although I think it is more the latter. While it is true that Shanahan does not give his investments the chance to succeed, he does not have the best record when it comes to player evaluations. Only one of the four receivers that he’s taken in the first three rounds of the past three drafts is currently consistently seeing the field for the 49ers, and the only player from this past draft class seeing consistent playing time is running back Elijah Mitchell, who is the one relegating Sermon to the bench. He also missed on Solomon Thomas with the third overall pick, and Javon Kinlaw, another defensive first-rounder, has not quite lived up to his promise. Add in the fact that Shanahan already missed on Jimmy Garoppolo and at the very least selected the Quarterback least ready to play from this past year’s class, and it is fair to question whether Shanahan should have the power that he’s been given within the organization.
Along with questionable personnel decisions, Shanahan is a horrible game manager. We all know about his clock management exploits, but it goes beyond that. Shanahan is a horrible fourth-down decision-maker, consistently putting himself in league with some of the older coaches notorious for horribly conservative decision making. Shanahan finished fifth-worst last year in the league in Football Outsiders' aggressiveness index which measures how proficient a coach is in going for it when he should be on fourth down, while through six weeks this year Shanahan had forfeited the fourth most win probability per game by kicking in go situation according to PFF’s Ben Baldwin. The 49ers also just don’t look like a very well-coached team. They don’t seem to have great discipline and rarely look like the more prepared team. The one time that has ever been the case with San Francisco was on the defensive side of the ball with Coordinator Robert Saleh, who they seem to really miss now that he is the Head Coach of the Jets. And beyond that, Shanahan doesn’t seem to be able to quickly think on his feet during games. Like the greatest players, coaches need to have a certain level of football instinct which Shanahan seems lacking. Just last week, Shanahan challenged a play because Colts running back Jonathan Taylor was ruled down despite the fact that the ball appeared to come out first. The only problem? The Colts recovered the fumble, so the 49ers wouldn’t have gotten the ball. Shanahan lost the challenge and a timeout for no particular reason due solely to a panic move. Coaches like Shanahan who ignore analytics often talk about the importance of “feel for the game,” and things that numbers can’t take into account. It might be time Shanahan changes course because he certainly is not feeling the game in the right way.
Despite everything that I’ve just said, I still think Shanahan is a good coach because his reputation as an offensive genius is not underserved. With the importance of the offensive game in today’s league, anyone who is able to design and run an offense like Shanahan is automatically going to be a net positive to their team. The question is in what capacity. Other coaches like Sean McVay or Brendan Staley who were hired due to their reputations as geniuses on their respective sides of the ball have been able to implement their schemes in the position of head coach, but they also have brought other qualities to the job, meaning that they are inherently more valuable in the position of Head Coach than they are as Coordinators. Is Kyle Shanahan adding more to the 49ers than he did running dominant and revolutionary offenses in Atlanta and Washington? It seems to me that he is just as brilliant of an offensive mind but isn’t bringing anything extra to the job- meaning that he is now essentially a glorified Offensive Coordinator whose deficiencies are now actually hurting his team. And yet none of this means the 49ers should get rid of Kyle Shanahan right now. Having that offensive mind in your building is a massive asset, and the realities of the human condition mean that they can’t simply demote him to Offensive Coordinator and bring someone else in. Rather, the change is going to have to come from Shanahan himself. He is going to have to acknowledge some deficiencies as a coach and delegate to others, starting with Player Personnel. He should give up his role in the Front Office because things are simply not working on that end right now. On top of that, he should allow himself to bring in more people who will help him with game management. This doesn’t even automatically become an analytics nerd, although that would be ideal, it simply means allowing himself to better his understanding of the ebbs and flows of a football game. And most importantly, he has to get it right at the Quarterback position. He’s being given a chance at a second quarterback that very few coaches are given, and he simply needs to do everything he can to develop and maximize Trey Lance in the long term. If not? Well before we know it, the clock might start ticking.
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Week 8 Picks
Last Week’s Record: 7-7 (1-0 locks)
Season Record: 57-58-1
*Lines as of Thursday Afternoon
Packers (+6.5) @ Cardinals
Falcons (-3) vs Panthers
Bills (-14) vs Dolphins
Bears (+4) vs 49ers
Browns (-3.5) vs Steelers
Lions (+3.5) vs Steelers
Titans (+2.5) @ Colts
Bengals (-10) vs Jets
Rams (-16) @ Texans
Patriots (+5.5) @ Chargers
Seahawks (-3.5) vs Jaguars
WFT (+3) @ Broncos
Buccaneers (-4.5, lock) @ Saints
Vikings (-3) vs Cowboys
Chiefs (-10) vs Giants
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