Legendary 49ers Reporter Questions Whether Kyle Shanahan Can Finish

"He hasn't shown the ability to finish. And until you can finish, you haven't accomplished anything."

Grant Cohn | Aug 31, 2024

Aug 10, 2024; Nashville, Tennessee, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan paces the side lines during the second half at Nissan Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports / Steve Roberts-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

Legendary 49ers reporter Ira Miller wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1977 to 2006. Which means he covered Bill Walsh, Joe Montana and all five Super Bowls the 49ers won.

Here's his assessment of Kyle Shanahan.

ME: How do you assess Kyle Shanahan?

MILLER: "Good, not great. He's unproven. He hasn't shown the ability to finish. And until you can finish, you haven't accomplished anything. How many times has he had teams be ahead in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl? Three times? Once as a coordinator with Atlanta where he just totally botched the play calling and the two times with the 49ers. You've got to be able to finish. It's not a 57-minute game."

ME: How do you compare him to his dad, Mike Shanahan?

MILLER: "His father had this reputation because of John Elway as a guy who wanted to open things up and throw. But when Shanahan got in control, you saw what he really believed in -- running the ball. He had great offensive concepts, but he believed as Bill Walsh did to a certain extent that you want to get ahead and then you want to run the ball. And with Mike, it was run the ball early. He believed in strong, powerful football, which is not the image people have of him. He was a real run-oriented coach. He believed in controlling games that way."

ME: How would you compare Kyle to Bill Walsh?

MILLER: "That's like comparing me to Red Smith. He's not in the same sentence, not in the same paragraph. No comparison. In today's NFL, Kyle probably is an above-average coach, but he ain't Bill Walsh. Let's not kid ourselves."

ME: He's not Andy Reid.

MILLER: "Andy Reid is up there with Bill Walsh. When Steve Mariucci became the 49ers head coach, the guy he wanted as his offensive coordinator was Andy Reid, not Marty Mornhinweg. And Mike Holmgren wouldn't let him go."

ME: In retrospect, the 49ers should have just hired Andy Reid. No disrespect to Mariucci.

MILLER: "Ha! Yeah. No question. Nobody knew it at the time that Andy Reid would end up one of the greatest coaches in history."

Published Aug 31, 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.