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Is 49ers Head Coach Kyle Shanahan on the Hot Seat?

Kyle Shanahan just finished his fourth double-digit-loss season in eight years.

Grant Cohn

Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan reacts after losing to the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
Jan 5, 2025; Glendale, Arizona, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan reacts after losing to the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images
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Kyle Shanahan just finished his fourth double-digit-loss season in eight years.

If he had won a Super Bowl by now, his job security probably wouldn't be in question. But he didn't win a Super Bowl -- instead, he gave two away. And now Fox Sports 1 Analyst Emmanuel Acho thinks Shanahan is on the hot seat.

"Let me be real about the 49ers. Shanahan -- his seat, it is officially hot. You just fired your special teams coach. You just fired your defensive coordinator. You would fire your offensive coordinator, but you are the offensive coordinator.

"Shanahan, now you gotta get it right. See, last offseason I suggested you got it all wrong. You should have paid Trent Williams sooner. Y’all didn’t. Should have paid Brandon Aiyuk sooner. Y’all didn’t. So I would suggest that you did it all wrong last season. I would also go as far as to suggest you wasted a year of Fred Warner’s life. You wasted a year of Nick Bosa’s life. You wasted a year of Charvarius Ward’s life. You wasted a year of Deommodore Lenoir’s life because you hired a defensive coordinator that was not suited for the job.

"You hired your friend. You wasted a year because of cronyism -- someone benefiting from friendship with you. Because Steve Wilks had the (number 3) defense in football with the Niners and you fired him. Hired Nick Sorensen, promoted him from within. He had the (29th) defense for the Niners and you said, 'I’m not going to fire him.' You're going to find another position for him within the organization. So, because of friendship, you wasted a whole year of the Niners life. So, yeah Shanahan, that seat is hot. You didn’t hire Sorensen because he was qualified, you hired him because he was your homie, and now you lost a whole season because he was your homie. Of course, that seat has to heat up."

I completely agree with Acho. Well put, Emmanuel.

From the moves Shanahan has made this offseason, I wouldn't be surprised if someone high up in the organization spoke with him recently and put him on notice. Shanahan has to hire an excellent defensive coordinator and make sure none of his players hold out this offseason. Because if the 49ers miss the playoffs again next season, he could get fired.

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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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