Is Kyle Shanahan Too Comfortable?

There seems to be nothing Shanahan can do to lose his job.
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Kyle Shanahan has more power and job security than just about any other head coach in the NFL.

The 49ers extend his contract every few years even though he hasn't won a Super Bowl. He got to hire the general manager, John Lynch, and he has input on personnel decisions. And he seems to be absolutely adored by the owner, Jed York, who's just grateful not to be a laughingstock after hiring Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly in back-to-back years before landing Shanahan.

There seems to be nothing Shanahan can do to lose his job. Before he lost the Super Bowl this year, York said he would have kept Shanahan even if the 49ers had lost to the Lions in the NFC Championship Game, which they almost did. Then in the Super Bowl, Shanahan's offense was horrible and unprepared, and he didn't know the playoff rules for overtime. And yet, the organization fired the defensive coordinator, Steve Wilks, and not Shanahan.

Whenever Shanahan comes close to winning a Championship, critics call him an elite head coach. And whenever Shanahan has a down season, critics make excuses for him. 

What other coach has it so good? Even Andy Reid has to win every season, because he has Patrick Mahomes. If the Chiefs were to miss the playoffs one year, people would look at him differently.

And that's part of the reason Reid has won three Championships. He has pressure to win them, unlike Shanahan, who gets praised for coming close.

Maybe Shanahan needs to go to another organization to win a Super Bowl, an organization that doesn't coddle him like the 49ers do. He's entirely too comfortable.


Published
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.