LAS VEGAS — Let’s make this clear up front: Kyle Shanahan is a hell of a football coach.
He’s innovative and creative, his players play for him, he’s helped build a culture of excellence in San Francisco and, he comes from strong head-coaching stock with his father, Mike, having with multiple Super Bowl titles on his résumé.
But …
But, this Super Bowl thing is becoming, well, a thing for Shanahan.
Steve Young, the last quarterback to lead the 49ers to a Super Bowl title, back in 1994, was on the phone with The Post a few days before Super Bowl 2024 between Shanahan’s 49ers and the defending-champion Chiefs Sunday night at Allegiant Stadium talking about how players’ and coaches’ legacies are cemented by the results of these games.
Fair or unfair, the legacy of Shanahan was as much up for grabs as any player or coach on either team because of the issues he’d had in the game before Sunday.
No one needed this more than Shanahan.
And now, after the Chiefs’ 25-22 overtime win over the 49ers Sunday, Shanahan’s big-game-coaching reputation takes yet another heartbreak hit.
Super Bowls define head coaches and quarterbacks more than anyone. If you’re a Super Bowl-winning head coach or quarterback, you’re a made man.
Shanahan is young, at age 44, and he’s not going anywhere. He’ll have more cracks at this Super Bowl thing.
But until he does break through, the weight of these Super Bowl failures will become heavier. It’s no different from professional golfers who win a bunch of tournaments but fail to win a major championship. The top golfers are measured by how many majors they win, same way NFL head coaches and quarterbacks are measured by how many Super Bowls they win.
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Unlike in his previous two Super Bowl losses, Shanahan didn’t lose this game with questionable decisions. In fact, he provided a catalyst moment in fourth quarter when he went for a fourth-and-3 from the Kansas City 15 and got a TD out of that series to go ahead 16-13.
Yet it wasn’t enough.
On Shanahan’s Super Bowl résumé are the following:
• As the Atlanta offensive coordinator, he had a hand in the Falcons losing that 28-3 fourth-quarter lead on the Patriots in Super Bowl LI when his play calls were too aggressive — calling for passes with the big lead instead of killing the clock with the ground game.
• As the 49ers head coach, his team led the Chiefs 20-10 in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl four years ago and lost 31-20.
• In the 2021 NFC Championship game, Shanahan’s Niners held a 10-point, fourth-quarter lead over the Rams and lost it, sending L.A. to the Super Bowl and not SF.
And now this.
“I never thought about the word legacy,” Shanahan said during the week before the game. “When I think of legacy, I think of my dad. It just doesn’t really work that way with me.’’
The thing is, though, the subjects of legacy don’t get to choose their own narrative. That’s done for them by the outside world.
Ironically, Shanahan’s counterpart in this game, Kansas City’s Andy Reid, once sat in the same uncomfortable chair Shanahan sits in now _ as a head coach with the reputation of being unable to win the big game. That was Reid’s narrative when he coached in Philadelphia. He was getting the Eagles to the precipice of Super Bowl titles but could not cross the finish line first.
That all changed — ironically — in that Super Bowl Kansas City won over the 49ers four years ago in a 21-point fourth-quarter comeback victory in what was Reid’s first Super Bowl ring. And it came in his seventh season in Kansas City.
Before that game, Reid was at the top of the label list as the most accomplished NFL coach without a Super Bowl ring.
Reid and the Chiefs added another ring to that legacy last season and now have three after Sunday night, which has catapulted Reid into a very different legacy list as one of the greatest NFL head coaches of all time.
“He’s a big-time coach,” Reid said this past week of Shanahan. “I really like the way he does things. He’s really good.”
Sunday was very much a judgment day for Shanahan, and it all went wrong for him.
Again.
“Narrative, good or bad, is just a narrative,” Shanahan said before the game.
Shanahan, who obviously desperately wanted to win this Super Bowl for his players, said he was going into this game with one specific goal in mind — other than winning.
“I just don’t want regrets,” he said. “I just want to do everything that makes sense to myself, that makes sense for our team. No matter how hard something is or good something is, you always keep perspective of what it really is. If you want your perspective to be someone else’s narrative, good luck being happy in life.
“Or successful.”
