It’s not easy to write about the Super Bowl, as it’s easily the most overanalyzed event in North American sports.
I could be one of the many that argue that the 49ers blew this game. With a ten point lead midway through the second half, San Francisco decided to go to the air game to try to ice the contest, despite their elite running game being their primary offense throughout the regular season and playoffs.
Or I could flip that argument, as many others have, and say that the Chiefs simply weren’t the same Chiefs for the first three quarters of that football game. But their defense did enough to give them a chance before Patrick Mahomes went all, well, Patrick Mahomes. The 49ers couldn’t put the game away and Kansas City took it from them, certainly an equally compelling case to be made there.
There are countless aspects of this game that the talking heads in the sports world are dissecting from the NFL’s final contest of the season. The inability of Richard Sherman to take care of Sammy Watkins in a rare straight up man coverage play in Robert Salah’s Super Bowl scheme. Jimmy Garoppolo couldn’t get the job done with the game on the line. Why did the Niners stop giving it to Deebo Samuel in the backfield? How did the Chiefs survive given the way Mahomes looked for most of the game? Why was Mahomes so awful in that first half? Why didn’t San Fran just run every play like they did their previous two games? How does everyone feel about Shakira and J-Lo gyrating for 20 minutes and calling it a halftime show?
But the arguments I take issue with most, and the core theme of this article, is the instantaneous and heavy impact on the narratives surrounding the head coaches stemming from one, single sixty-minute stretch in the grand scheme of the NFL.
The Super Bowl is massive, obviously. When careers end and we start thinking about Hall of Fame candidacies, the first question people ask is “Does he have a ring?” Or, “How many?” But when we are talking about one specific Super Bowl, and extend that conversation to the game planning and play calling by the head coaches, it’s like the world forgets that one team has to win and the other has to lose.
The winning coach is heralded as a hero, a genius. Andy Reid gets all the glory this week, and the world forgets about all the blemishes on his resume, all the bad decisions he’s made, and all the great teams he’s had in the past that fell short. In one four-hour span Andy Reid went from a coach that could destroy the regular season but always found a way to screw it all up in the postseason to one of the greatest coaches that’s ever lived. And all because he has a new piece of jewelry for his finger?
News flash people, Andy Reid has always been and will continue to be a world class football coach. The fact that he didn’t have a Super Bowl prior to Sunday should bare no impact on anything other than his legacy for your children’s children. There is no question that having a title will ensure he is remembered forever as an innovative football mastermind. The problem I’m having here is how that wouldn’t be the case had the Chiefs lost this game.
Same goes for Kyle Shanahan in all of this. An offensive guru in his own right, Shanahan orchestrated the offense for the Atlanta Falcons team that made opposing defenses tremble during the 2016 season. It was his scheme that helped Matt Ryan become league MVP, and that put the Falcons up 28-3 against the Patriots in Super Bowl 51. Yet somehow, someway, a lot of the talk leading up to (and following) this Super Bowl was about his play calling down the stretch in that game. Somehow the football universe found a way to blame an offensive coordinator for blowing a 25-point lead? That’s some ass backwards logic if I’ve ever heard it.
Then he gets the top job in San Fran, and along with a first time GM in John Lynch took a struggling franchise and turned them into an absolute juggernaut in three years flat. Do people not realize how few guys there are in this league that can do that? The Niners made a zone-blocking run scheme must see TV for this entire season in a league with a fan base that craves the aerial attack. This guy just turned 40 and has already been in charge of two different team’s offenses that had fourth quarter leads in Super Bowls. And all we’re hearing about Shanahan this week is how he took his foot off the gas again, got away from the run again, and cost his team a Super Bowl again. All anyone has to say about Kyle Shanahan is that he chokes? Is it really possible that people can forget just how phenomenal at his job this man is because his teams blew a couple of leads?
For some reason, likely due in large part to the single game element of the NFL Playoffs, the football world operates and analyzes in a headspace of absolutes that is equal parts unfair and not making any sense whatsoever. The winning coach is a genius, the loser gets lambasted. Andy Reid’s legacy is cemented for eternity for all those morons from the past that said he couldn’t get it done when it matters most, while all Kyle Shanahan’s astonishing accomplishments are forgotten because his club couldn’t close out the most prolific passer football has ever seen for a full sixty minutes? Because he trusted his passing game to win the game for him?
Is there criticism that can be fairly made about Shanahan from Sunday’s affair? Of course there is. I was screaming at the television when they let the clock run out in the first half instead of trying to take the lead before intermission. But if you think that in any way discredits all he has done in this league, especially at such a young age, you’re as out of your mind as the rest of the Monday morning quarterbacks making their rounds this week.
Pete Carroll is a coach of the year candidate every season with these Seahawks teams that continue to overachieve year after year. He has cemented himself as one of the very best coaches in this league. And yet, the most talked about thing when Carroll is mentioned is his decision to throw the ball from the goal line against New England, allowing Malcolm Butler to become a folk hero instead of letting Marshawn Lynch punch it in for back-to-back titles. No one mentions that despite having Lynch, Seattle was below average running the football in the redzone that season. And even worse, if Russell Wilson completes that pass no one would say it was a bad play call. Matter of fact, I can guarantee it would’ve been perceived as brilliant.
I can hear Cris Collinsworth now. “The Patriots had the box stacked against Marshawn and Carroll outsmarted them. What a brave and perfect play call!”
But it was the Super Bowl, and the ball was picked, and now Pete Carroll will always be the fool that handed New England yet another championship. Sports cannot operate in a world of absolutes. Pete Carroll has accomplished way too much for that to be the memory that defines him, but apparently that’s the world we live in.
Back to this Super Bowl now. There is one play in particular that football analysts seem to have honed in on as their primary reasoning for calling Shanahan a choker. With just over five minutes left to play and a three-point lead, the Niners ran the ball on first down from their own 20, gaining five yards on the play.
It’s the following 2nd and 5 that has the football universe up in arms.
Instead of sticking to their all-world run game, Shanahan decided to go to the play-action section of the playbook to try to keep the chains moving and keep the ball out of the hands of Mahomes. Prior to that pass, Garoppolo was twelve for thirteen on play-action passes for the game. He had his man George Kittle open, but Chris Jones made a tremendous defensive play and batted down the pass.
Twelve for thirteen.
Are we really going to crash down on Shanahan for calling a play type that Kansas City hadn’t stopped for three-and-a-half quarters?
It’s easy for Monday morning quarterbacks to scream things like “If you’re going to lose, lose with what got you there.” But I can guarantee that sentiment wouldn’t be the same if San Fran ran it with Raheem Mostert and Chris Jones met him in the backfield for a loss.
And that really is the point of this article right there. When something goes wrong in the Super Bowl, we blame the coach and argue that something different would have worked. We seem to love to blame play calling above all else. It’s garbage journalism really. “What can I say about Shanahan in my article? Well this play didn’t work, so I’ll call him an idiot for not doing something different.”
It’s the issue we run into when we put so much stock into a single football game. The world nitpicks each and every play and comes to the conclusion that Jimmy G isn’t ready for the bright lights, or that Kyle Shanahan is a choke artist. Would he do it differently if he could? Probably. But to say Shanahan can’t handle the biggest stage because he’s let two different teams mount 4th quarter comebacks in Super Bowls is insane, because unlike the vast majority of coaches in the NFL, at least he gets there.
If Chris Jones doesn’t knock down that pass and the 49ers go on to win is Kyle Shanahan still a fool for not sticking with his powerful run game? If they run the ball twice and don’t get the first down are we saying that he coached scared? And that he just couldn’t trust Garoppolo with the game on the line?
Of course we are!
No matter what the result is, someone will be a hero and someone will be a coach that makes terrible decisions in crunch time. It’s just as comical to me as it is ridiculous.
The people that are calling Shanahan scared for not chasing points late in the first half are the same people that are saying he should have run the ball and worked the clock in the second instead of aggressively chasing the win. There is criticism and praise to go around everywhere following that game. Jimmy G, for three quarters, played better than Patrick Mahomes. He gets a pass batted down and Shanahan is out of his mind? Give me a break. If Mahomes doesn’t wake up in the fourth quarter like he did we’d be saying it’s he and Andy Reid that can’t get the job done.
The criticism isn’t completely unfounded. The Niners had the Chiefs, and they couldn’t finish the job. They let Patrick Mahomes, the best player in the world, hang around long enough to wake up and scorch them to rip the title from their fingertips. But if you think that means that Kyle Shanahan, who most have revered as an offensive savant, is all of a sudden a choker because of a couple bad quarters of football, well that just ain’t right. The problem for Shanahan is that those bad quarters were both fourth quarters and they were both in Super Bowls. So I guess that leaves Kyle in the same situation Andy Reid was in before the clock struck zero on Super Bowl 54. He’ll never be poor clock management Andy again. Somehow, because of this one game, one of football’s greatest coaches can now actually be considered a great coach. So I guess Shanahan just has to win one of these things now, because apparently that’s the only way coaches are appreciated in this league.