SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Kyle Shanahan’s offense is mimicked throughout the NFL, with multiple teams utilizing his innovative schemes in their playbooks.
His former assistants are spread around the league as coordinators and head coaches, making the “Shanahan offense” one of the most predominant in today’s game.
In seven years as a head coach, he has turned overlooked quarterbacks into productive ones while leading the San Francisco 49ers to four NFC championship games — and now they’re about to play in the Super Bowl for the second time in five seasons.
All that’s missing is the ultimate championship that painfully eluded him as an offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons and then again in his first trip to the title game with San Francisco. The 44-year-old son of former NFL coach Mike Shanahan — who led the Denver Broncos to back-to-back Super Bowl crowns in the late 1990s — gets another chance to fill the one big void in his career on Feb. 11, when the 49ers get a rematch against the Kansas City Chiefs in Las Vegas.
“There’s been a lot of good things, but the ultimate goal, we always say it, there’s only one team happy at the end of the year,” the younger Shanahan said. “We’re real proud of a lot of things that we’ve accomplished here in the last five years or so. We still want to be that one team that’s happy. No matter what you accomplish, if you don’t win that Super Bowl, it’s always disappointing.”
Shanahan has experienced plenty of postseason disappointment, leading to questions about his ability to win the “big one.”
He was in charge of Atlanta’s offense when the Falcons infamously squandered a 28-3 second-half lead over the New England Patriots at Super Bowl LI seven years ago, leading to a 34-28 overtime loss.
He then had a 10-point lead against Kansas City in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl four years ago, only to have 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and the offense sputter and the defense wilt in a 31-20 loss to the Chiefs.
San Francisco’s back-to-back losses in the NFC title game the past two seasons didn’t help, either, but Shanahan was able to lead his team back there again and win. Making sure his message and his schemes never get stale is one reason why.
“Every year, going into every season there’s always something new that we have to work on to get better at to attain what we’re trying to do here,” All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner said. “That’s something that he has done a great job of every year, just continuing to get better as a coach and a leader for us.”
Shanahan has even started to shake the rap that his teams weren’t built for comebacks, with critics pointing to an 0-38 record as coach of the 49ers when trailing by at least eight points in the fourth quarter.
This postseason, though, San Francisco — which had a first-round bye as the NFC’s top seed — has been able to put together second-half comebacks in both of its wins. In the divisional round, the 49ers trailed the Green Bay Packers 21-14 entering the fourth quarter before rallying to win 24-21; last weekend, they overcame a 17-point halftime deficit against the Detroit Lions, scoring 27 points in a row in a 34-31 victory.
Shanahan is now 8-3 as a head coach in the playoffs, trailing only Vince Lombardi — yes, the late Packers legend whose name is on the Super Bowl trophy — in winning percentage for coaches with at least 10 playoff games. Yet he remains his own toughest critic.
“I think if you’re not hard on yourself, it’s kind of hard to put in the work and stuff that it takes, I think, to be an NFL coach,” he said. “I think most of us are pretty hard on ourself. We’re kind of perfectionists because you know how hard it is to win games for everybody. So you demand a lot out of everybody, just like you demand a lot out of yourself. It’s a very fine line of winning and losing, so you question every single thing, every single moment, and that always starts with yourself.”
While Shanahan’s offense is as modern as it comes, his approach as a coach is decidedly old school. He has helped build the 49ers through the defensive front seven, dedicating much of the team’s resources there over the years.
His play-calling strategy revolves around the running game, even if he has opened things up a bit more since Brock Purdy took over at quarterback last season. Shanahan eschews trick plays and overly aggressive fourth-down decisions, and he is demanding of everyone around him.
“I know that if I’m not doing something right, I’m going to hear about it,” said offensive line coach Chris Foerster, who spent four years working in Washington when Shanahan was offensive coordinator and then joined him in San Francisco in 2019.
“If one of my players isn’t doing something right, if there’s a drop-off during practice, they’re going to hear about it from me. They’re going to hear about it from other players. So they work with each other. We’ve got a good veteran team that way. But it starts at the top, and it really does; Kyle is just very demanding of all of us.”
Shanahan’s greatest trait might be as a teacher in video sessions, where he can spend hours describing the intricacies of a single play in a way that helps all of his players learn something new.
“His team meetings are phenomenal,” All-Pro tight end George Kittle said, “the way he describes football, the way that he teaches football to offense, defense and special teams guys. He’s been such a great teacher. … It’s really fun to be around a person like that, because I’ve been playing football since I was 5 years old, but I’ve learned more in the seven years — specifically, those last three or four years — than I probably did my first 26.”