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49ers HC Kyle Shanahan has an Abysmal Win Percentage in Close Games

Not the mark of a great head coach.

Grant Cohn

Oct 10, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan stands on the sideline during the fourth quarter against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
Oct 10, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan stands on the sideline during the fourth quarter against the Seattle Seahawks at Lumen Field. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images / Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images
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Kyle Shanahan can't close.

He is not a closer. He can take a team to a Super Bowl but he can't take them all the way to a Super Bowl victory because he is a deeply flawed head coach.

He can pile up lots of yards and points on offense and he's had some of the best defenses in the league the past few seasons. His roster often is the best in the league. And yet he finds ways to not win Super Bowls. Since 2017, he has blown 18 double-digit leads -- tops in the NFL during that time.

He's also one of the worst coaches in NFL history in close games. Seriously. According to the AP's Josh Dubow, Shanahan's win percentage is just .378 in games decided by seven points or fewer, which ranks 119 out of 124 head coaches who have been in at least 40 games decided seven or fewer points. The only head coaches with worse winning percentages than Shanahan in such games are Dom Capers, Zac Taylor, Doug Marrone, Monte Clark and Dan Henning. Not great company.

So why is Shanahan so bad in close games?

Because he's an offensive coordinator at heart. Late in close games, he's more focused on gaining yards than working the clock, which is why he passes so much with leads and lets inferior teams hang around and ultimately come back and beat him. Clock management is his weakness. He needs to blow out teams to beat them.

Not the mark of a great head coach.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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