PFF: 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan is the NFL's 2nd Best Head Coach

Shanahan certainly is a good head coach, but he also was the main reason the 49ers lost the Super Bowl this past season.
Jan 28, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan looks on before the NFC Championship football game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 28, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan looks on before the NFC Championship football game against the Detroit Lions at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports / Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
In this story:

The 49ers have no excuse not to win the Super Bowl this upcoming season.

They have the no. 1 offense in the NFL according to NFL.com. And they have the no. 2 head coach in the NFL according to Pro Football Focus analyst Sam Monson, who ranks Kyle Shanahan ahead of every head coach except Andy Reid.

"Shanahan has yet to get over the hump and win a Super Bowl despite holding leads in one as the Atlanta Falcons‘ offensive coordinator and two as the San Francisco 49ers‘ head coach," writes Monson, "but he is the main reason why the 49ers are the favorites to come out of the NFC once again in 2024. They led the NFL in averaging 0.161 EPA per play in 2023 and while they ranked 12th on the defensive side of the ball, Shanahan was bold enough to make the change from Steve Wilks to Nick Sorensen at defensive coordinator heading into this season. That’s good news for Sorensen’s future career prospects, as three of Shanahan’s former coordinators are currently NFL head coaches."

Monson makes some good points, but it's hard to say Shanahan "is the main reason why the 49ers are the favorites to come out of the NFC" when their roster has 9 or 10 of the NFL's top 100 players.

Shanahan certainly is a good head coach, but he also was the main reason the 49ers lost the Super Bowl this past season -- he got severely outcoached in the Super Bowl by Andy Reid and Steve Spagnuolo.

That's why I'd rank him below John Harbaugh and Sean McVay. Those two are champions. Shanahan isn't one yet.


Published
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.