In their first 29 Super Bowls, the 49ers have won five and lost none. In the next 29, they lost three and won none. Throw in coach Kyle Shanahan's role with the Falcons in an epic loss after beating the Patriots 28-3 in Super Bowl LI, and a narrative emerged that Shanahan and the 49ers couldn't win a big game.
The narrative is clear. Article on Tuesday Wall Street Journal It had this address: The brilliant coach who can't stop losing big games.
So, is this just bad luck, or is something going wrong for Shanahan when the brass ring and silver cup come within his reach?
“I mean you like to fix the perception because I would love to win one for what I know about football and I know that if I fix the perception that means I did everything I wanted to do, which is not to fix the perception, but to win a Super Bowl,” Shanahan told reporters on Tuesday. But I also know that when you say “big games,” we had to win a bunch of big games to get to Super Bowls. We've won a lot of big games here. We won a lot of big games to get to the playoffs. The fact that we keep getting there shows you guys how capable we are of winning big games and I think you realize that. But those two Super Bowl games were tough losses to Kansas City. But do you think if we win that, it means I can win a big game? No, it means our team won the Super Bowl. This is what I understand. You guys can have any story you want, but success or failure, it comes down to one game and I hope to be part of the team that wins a game at the end of the year, but to say that “the Niners can't win a big game would be a very inaccurate statement.”
The answer may be this simple: Shanahan's biggest failures came against the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. Tom Brady seven years ago, Patrick Mahomes four years ago, and Mahomes again three days ago.
The problem for Shanahan is that he will likely continue to intersect with Mahomes for the next 10 or 15 years. And it's very likely that Shanahan will be kept at bay by the fact that Mahomes always seems to thrive in the moments when he's walking a tightrope atop a piranha tank while balancing himself with a pole burning at each end and the flames creeping toward his hands. .
Can Shanahan change the narrative? definitely. To do that, it would be helpful to have a quarterback like the one he could have had with the second overall pick in the 2017 draft.
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