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Kyle Shanahan Has Blown 18 Double Digit Leads as the 49ers Head Coach

This is a troubling trend.

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on the sideline during the third quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan on the sideline during the third quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images / Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images
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This is a troubling trend.

The 49ers had a 13-point lead this Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals. Just a few weeks ago, the 49ers had a 14-point lead against the Rams and lost.

No one finds ways to blow double-digit leads quite like Kyle Shanahan. Since he became the 49ers' head coach in 2017, he has blown 18 double-digit leads -- the most in franchise history according to The Associated Press' Josh Dubow. No other 49ers coach ever has had more than eight blown double-digit leads. So Shanahan is special.

Still, he isn't the biggest choke artist of all time. That would be his dad, Mike Shanahan, who blew an NFL-record 33 double-digit leads during his tenure as an NFL coach.

Both Mike Shanahan and Kyle Shanahan are good at coaching coaches and developing an offensive scheme that other coaches can use and succeed with. But neither Shanahan is good at closing out games, which means neither Shanahan is great because great coaches close out games.

It should come as no surprise why Kyle Shanahan has failed to grow or evolve as a coach despite being in the league for more than 15 years. He's just like his father, who also never changed or evolved.

Kyle Shanahan has had a double-digit lead in all three Super Bowls he was in, and he lost all three.

Shanahan most likely will blow more double-digit leads this season. And if he misses the playoffs, it will be interesting to see if the 49ers finally move on and find a new 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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