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Kyle Shanahan Thinks the 49ers Still Can Win the Super Bowl

We'll see if the 49ers can put it all together after their bye week.

Grant Cohn

Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan chats with a reporter before a game against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images
Sep 9, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan chats with a reporter before a game against the New York Jets at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images / David Gonzales-Imagn Images
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The first half of the 49ers' season didn't go as planned.

It was supposed to be the easy portion of the schedule. The 49ers were expected to be 6-2 at worst by now. But they lost to the Rams and the Cardinals in addition to the Vikings and Chiefs, and so the 49ers are 4-4 at the bye week. They haven't beaten a good team yet and they're struggling to close out games. They're not the dominant team they used to be.

But they have nine regular-season games left, and Christian McCaffrey hasn't played a down yet. Which means they still have hope that they can go to the Super Bowl and actually win it for a change.

“I feel we're capable of doing everything else we set out for," head coach Kyle Shanahan said on his Monday conference call. "I look at where our team is at and where I think our team can be, and I don't think we're there yet. I think there are a lot of things we need to improve on. I think we are gradually doing that. But I think we’ve got the guys here capable of doing it. We’ve just got to make sure we become a better team in the second half than we were in the first half."

Shanahan's assessment is fair and honest. The 49ers certainly have the talent to win a title, but they haven't played up to their talent yet. They haven't even won two games in a row. And their issues have been bigger than simply not having McCaffrey. For instance, their defense hasn't been good.

We'll see if the 49ers can put it all together after their bye week.

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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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