San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has been seeking to reset the narrative around the coin toss at the start of overtime in the Super Bowl.
It’s a moment that has been dissected and analysed to death already in the short time since the 49ers lost to the Chiefs. Some 49ers players said they didn’t know the rules, raising serious question marks over Kyle Shanahan’s job preparing his team, and his coaches.
But Shanahan has come out to silence that narrative now. “We told everyone as we were waiting for the coin toss to review everyone to make sure they’re sure before we go out,” Shanahan said. “So, we asked position coaches to do that. But I didn’t cover it in a meeting on the Super Bowl week. I don’t think that changes anything.”
“I always make the decision in the heat of battle with that information,” Shanahan said. “If it was like the Super Bowl the year before the one that seemed more like a shootout, I think I might have felt a little bit differently but having that information going in and the way ours was going, I didn’t feel differently. I felt accurate with what they recommended.”
Kyle Shanahan is earning the tag of “bottler”
QB Brock Purdy has come out in defence of his head coach, saying his positional coach had informed him, “He explained the rules to me and everything so I had an understanding of it,” Purdy said.
“If I fixed perception, that means I did everything I wanted to do, which isn’t fixed perception, it’s winning a damn Super Bowl,” Kyle Shanahan said. “We’ve won a lot of big games here. We won a lot of big games to get into the playoffs. … These two Super Bowls have been tough losing to Kansas City. But to think that if we win that, that means I can win a big game. No, that means our team won a Super Bowl. That’s what I understand.
“You guys can have any narrative you want, but the success or the failure, it comes down to one game. And I hope that I can be a part of the team that wins a game at the end of the year. But to say that the Niners can’t win a big game would be an extremely inaccurate statement.”
While Kyle Shanahan may be right that it’s about wins not narratives, it can be argued that at the biggest moments in his two Super Bowl coaching appearances he has gone conservative.
In fact if we look at this Super Bowl we see the Kansas City Chiefs had scored on their last three possessions. So while the game may not have been a shootout the Chiefs were definitely in the groove when regulation ended.
Should this have changed Kyle Shanahan’s decision? Most people have argued it should. He took the safe option, hoping his defence could win the Super Bowl for him by stopping this generations best QB. Maybe next time he will take the more aggressive option of trying to win the Super Bowl and not decide to try not to lose it.
For more like this, you can visit our NFL section here. Also, follow us on Facebook for coverage of the NFL and much more.