John Lynch Says the 49ers Need "Finishers." Is Kyle Shanahan One?

On Tuesday, John Lynch defined what finishers are and described the 49ers' search for more of them.

Grant Cohn | Jul 23, 2024

Jul 27, 2022; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan (left) and general manager John Lynch watches the players during Training Camp at the SAP Performance Facility near Levi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports / Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers have an abundance of excellent players, but they don't have enough finishers, which is one reason why they haven't won the Super Bowl yet.

On Tuesday, John Lynch defined what finishers are and described the 49ers' search for more of them.

"That's one of the things we always talk about, adding finishers," Lynch said. "And what does finishing mean? It means finishing the day, it means finishing a meeting, finishing a game, finishing a series, finishing a season. That's important in this league because this league is a grind, and you need people that can close things out. I think as close as we’ve come, I think you just keep adding those type of people and you give yourself a chance. Kyle and I, I think were kind of raised the same way. My dad used to say, ‘In life, all you want is a chance, and you have to earn that.’ His dad used to say that as a head coach all the time. I remember hearing that in my years at Denver. We have a chance. This team has a chance. It's an awesome opportunity that we have going into camp. I'm really excited. I'm fired up. I think that's why you need finishers to close everything you do, to finish everything you do.”

Based on Lynch's terrific definition, it seems clear that Christian McCaffrey is a finisher. Brock Purdy is a finisher. Fred Warner is a finisher. Charvarius Ward is a finisher.

But is Kyle Shanahan a finisher?

He's the only head coach in NFL history who has lost two Super Bowls in which he was leading by double digits. More than once he has had leads late in Super Bowls and has been unable to close them out, or "finish" them.

You'd think a head coach who's a finisher would be able to hold a lead in a Super Bowl when his roster is as good as the 49ers' roster is. So based on Lynch's definition of the word, Shanahan absolutely isn't a finisher.

Not yet.

Published Jul 23, 2024

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.