San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan joined his friend Chris Simms’ Unbuttoned podcast. Simms begins by giving Shanahan a difficult time for “Shanahat” appearance, saying that Kyle is looking for the surfer / skateboarder appearance. Shanahan said the reason he continued to wear the hat last year was because his wife said, “That is the reason we are winning.” The wife always knows what is best. The real story here is that Shanahan said the hat would not be a routine look for this upcoming season.
It was refreshing to hear Shanahan talk about topics we all talk about, like quarantine, the real estate market in Silicon Valley, and finding out the hard way that you’re old. Simms and Shanahan played when Shanahan knew he wanted to be a head coach. Shanahan talked about his rise in the coaching ranking and how it started in Tampa Bay, where Kyle spent most of his time on the defensive end. The two go into the difference in training styles, from Jon Gruden to Kyle’s father and Bill Belichick.
Shanahan spoke about the importance of defense and how difficult it is to obtain and maintain a fast pass. “We had a hard time getting one,” we said. He also talked about having a defensive Plan B where you don’t have a good passing career, citing how dominant the 49ers were at the start of the season compared to when the Saints game came. “The rush to pass isn’t going to last all year, you have to have other things, whether it’s blitzing or your offensive running game.”
Shanahan said he knew the Niners were “there” on defense based on their success during training camp. He said he could say that this was the best defense he had ever coached or been part of, except for his first year in Tampa. I will transcribe the pod because I felt that everything Shanahan said was good information:
We feel special. Every time you have a defense like that, you feel like a playoff contender. Our offensive was not there yet when we started. Jimmy had just come out of ACL surgery. He had some good practices. He had a very bad practice. It is crazy how well documented it is a practice, but it was bad. We were also unsure of our receivers. No one had established a place. We depend on many newbies who had not played. We also had many players to play with who were injured at the time we didn’t end up receiving.
We also didn’t know exactly where our online or running game was. We thought that would be good. We knew we had a lot of backs that we liked. We didn’t know how it would work because we saw them just as good. Then we got into that Tampa game and our defense played like we expected. Our offense also played as expected. Simply very inconsistent. It was great for me to be in a situation, I had never been before, to call a game to help our defense. I always felt that if we didn’t score we would lose. I never really had that. So I thought during the offseason that I have to change that mindset and you will have to learn that it is different. So to go through those first few games where we weren’t clicking that much, especially the Pittsburgh game where we had five turnovers in the first half and still came back and won. We did it by running the ball and playing good defense. We lost some guys in that game.
Then you go to the Rams, and our defense continues to play very well. I think that at the end of the game 8 of our 11 boys were substitutes or had not played before. In order to continue dominating the game the way our defense played, I thought, “Okay, I feel quite special with this team.” Then the offense kept getting better every week, and we made that move to bring Emmanuel [Sanders] Because we knew we needed a veteran receiver to come in and add some consistency. He did everything he expected, and even more. Just the guy he was, the professional he was, we really took off. It was then that our offensive began to grow a little. I thought our offense took us when our defense went through some bad streaks.
Shanahan said last year was the most special year he has ever been a part of, and he still expressed frustration at falling short in the end, but acknowledged that this is the NFL. You could feel Kyle’s sense of urgency and how much he wants to play football again.
