Fair or not, 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo will have to carry the burden of Sunday's 31-20 Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs. That is, until they get a chance to redeem themselves, longtime NFL writer John Clayton tells 106.7 The Fan.
Kansas City's comeback win was reminiscent of a previous stain on Shanahan's record, when as the offensive coordinator for the Falcons in Super Bowl LI, Atlanta improbably blew a 28-3 third-quarter lead over New England. The Patriots rallied to score 31 unanswered points, including the game-winning touchdown in overtime, to beat the Falcons 34-28 in Houston. It's a loss that still haunts Falcons fans to this day.
In similar fashion Sunday night, the 49ers led the Chiefs 20-10 entering the fourth quarter, before giving up 21 unanswered points to Kansas City. For the second time in three years, Kyle Shanahan was left stunned on the sideline, facing an entire offseason to contemplate what went wrong.
"They just didn't run the ball well enough in the fourth quarter," Clayton told The Sports Junkies on Monday. "I mean, you go back even to the bad loss to Kyle Shanahan when he was in Atlanta, with a 25-point loss to the Patriots. I mean it was kind of like the same thing. I mean, he just didn't make the right calls at the right time.
"And I know that there was a stretch there – now, again, he had one drive once they started to trail where they had like two or three first downs. But when you think in two Super Bowls, you have like about two first downs. You have punts, interceptions, mistakes – all those different things – and that worked against him."
Both collapses had as much to do with outstanding quarterback play – from Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes, respectively – as they did the coaching that allowed such resurgent comebacks. But regardless of who's most to blame, the albatross of a Super Bowl collapse hangs around the neck of the coach whose watch it happened under.
"And now, where Andy Reid has a stigma of being the best coach who hadn't won a Super Bowl, now you have Kyle Shanahan (with a stigma) that he can't do much in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl games," said Clayton. "And so that stigma's going to be with him and that's really gonna hurt.
"Because more and more you see these Super Bowls, you have a game like that, like in Seattle they had the blow of not being able to do anything coming off at the one-yard-line. That hurt. So there are a lot of bad things right now that's setting there for Kyle Shanahan and, again, a lot of great things for Kansas City."
NFL Network analyst Charley Casserly argued Monday that Shanahan actually doesn't deserve any of the blame for this Super Bowl loss, saying the 49ers' pass rush was covering up for a "weak group of corners." Those corners, Casserly says, ultimately folded with repeated blown coverages, which allowed Kansas City to come storming back with 21 fourth-quarter points.
"Shanahan had nothing to do with the loss at all," he said. "I mean, that's just ridiculous."
Clayton was asked if he thinks a specific flaw in Shanahan is to blame, or if his players just aren't executing.
"Well they didn't execute, but of course, I mean, he's the one that's gotta get them to execute and it's gonna stick by him because he's the head coach," Clayton said. "And so because of that, he has to have that until they fix it. And you look at what happens afterwards, I mean, the Atlanta loss, that carried over for a couple years; the Seattle loss carried over for a couple years. We'll see how it goes for the Rams, but this is tough."
"Well the difference in the Atlanta loss is he wasn't head coach," Jason Bishop countered. "I mean, there's a big difference there."
"Yeah, but again, it's gonna stick with him because he's the one that took the criticism," Clayton returned. "He's done a great job in San Francisco. And again, to think to go from 2-14 to the Super Bowl is absolutely incredible. I mean that goes to his favor, but now the team has to respond. Okay, what happened in this game? I mean you have a 10-point lead, fourth quarter.
"You know, he made a mistake in the latter part of the first half, on not calling a timeout when he should have called a timeout. That'll go against him. Again, it's unfair, but it's reality."
"That's gonna stand by him and then the same thing is gonna go to Jimmy Garoppolo, because here's Jimmy Garoppolo – fair or unfair – I mean he doesn't execute well in the fourth quarter," Clayton said. "And then of course as everything's starting to fall apart in the latter part of the game, he fell apart.
"Again, so many unfair things happened in this big game, but it's gonna stick with him, because, again, there's no time to be able to fix it. And until you get back into a Super Bowl, you get back into a big game like that, you have to live with it and live very not too well."
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