00:00Because yesterday was so much just about the game
00:03and beating the Denver Broncos,
00:06I sort of felt like today might be a better opportunity
00:11to speak on something that I found to be special,
00:15and we never really got to it yesterday.
00:18But Kyle Shanahan has now coached more games than Bill Walsh
00:23as the San Francisco 49ers head coach.
00:25And I know some will immediately get uncomfortable
00:28with those two names next to one another.
00:32Bill Walsh was Bill Walsh.
00:35I mean, three Super Bowl rings, but way more important than that.
00:39Bill Walsh, in so many ways, he built this.
00:44He built so many pieces of 49er football
00:47and the way offense was played, a true genius
00:52and trailblazer and all of those things.
00:55And just be loved and may he rest in peace.
00:57But from the standpoint of the number of games,
01:01I think because of that, this makes Kyle Shanahan's time
01:06here as the 49ers head coach really, really special.
01:10And I wonder how, especially long-time 49er fans feel about this.
01:15Like, are you willing to sort of give Kyle the two seed yet?
01:19But as far as history of San Francisco 49ers head coaches,
01:24I know there's another guy, blame it on the Bassanova,
01:27and he had two rings.
01:29And for a lot of people, that's the end of the conversation.
01:33That's all they do.
01:35One has rings, one doesn't, period.
01:37But to me, there's nuance to this conversation.
01:42And I think the 49ers have the best coach in the NFL.
01:46I have felt that way for a while.
01:48I thought last year proved it.
01:50I've said this before.
01:52I would trade him for no one.
01:53There's not a coach in the NFL that I would take over Kyle, period.
01:57Not Andy, not McVay, not any of these people
02:01who have won a ring before.
02:02I would trade him for no one.
02:03And so I wonder where everybody's at with regard to Kyle Shanahan,
02:09who has now coached more games than anyone
02:12as the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.
02:15I think you can look at it and say that he is number two,
02:18or you could look at Seifert and say, well, he's number three.
02:21And you could look at Harbaugh and say, well, Harbaugh,
02:23in a shorter sample, he did more in a shorter sample than Shanahan.
02:28So he's number four.
02:29It doesn't even, for me, come down to ranking.
02:31I just can't help but look at the comp with Bill Walsh.
02:35And I'm just looking at Bill Walsh's years
02:36where he takes over in 1979.
02:39They go two and 14.
02:40I think that was the OJ team.
02:42And the next year they go six and 10.
02:45And they were equally kind of dreadful
02:48and not really trending toward what would happen the year after.
02:51And then they go 13 and three.
02:52They win the Super Bowl.
02:53They beat Dallas in the regular year, my first ever game.
02:56And they go out there and they win the bowl.
02:58Well, Shanahan goes six and 10, which was, I believe, an 0 and 9.
03:03Yes.
03:03And then you got Garoppolo.
03:05Right.
03:05And the next year, well, you go four and 12.
03:08And then the year after that, you went 13 and three.
03:11And you went to the Super Bowl.
03:13So if he did what Walsh did, which was bad year, bad year, 13 and three,
03:18go to the bowl, which is exactly what Bill Walsh did.
03:21And they were able to knock off Dallas in the NFC Championship game, the catch,
03:26and go out there and they needed a late drive and a goal line stand
03:29in the third quarter to win that game.
03:31So if Shanahan would have done that, if they would have won that game,
03:35the first Super Bowl, would we be thinking about Shanahan
03:39as greater than or equal to Walsh?
03:41I think so.
03:42I don't know, because Walsh has got this majesty to him.
03:45And I'm not, you're certainly not going to hear from me any taking away of that.
03:51You know, maybe if Kyle wins multiple Super Bowls and then we wait another 10
03:56or 20 years and have this conversation, maybe that holds up a little bit better.
04:02Bill Walsh is the gold standard as far as head coaching for the San Francisco 49ers.
04:09I'd actually even just say in this market, just the gold standard.
04:13Steve Kerr and Bruce Bochy obviously are right there in terms of rings.
04:17But to me, in terms of building, sustaining, and dominating, it's Bill Walsh.
04:23Bill Walsh is the best coach that's ever been in this market.
04:27And I don't think anything is kind of close at all to changing that.
04:31So there's an emotional tie there that, and I don't even want to pick at that.
04:35I just, I do want to know where everybody sits with Kyle Shanahan as he arrived at that moment.
04:44And it got kind of overwhelmed, as it should, by the fact that the Niners won a big game.
04:48And they won a big game by 10 points and all of that.
04:51But it's tough for some people, and no shade, it's tough for some people to fully appreciate a coach
05:00or a quarterback until they win the whole thing.
05:04But it's not for all of us.
05:06It's not for me.
05:08We've made this comparison before.
05:09I think there's a lot of people around the NFL who get a lot of flowers who haven't won the
05:15whole thing before.
05:16Harbaugh did for a while, having a rough year.
05:19Josh Allen does.
05:20Joe Burrow does.
05:22Lamar Jackson does.
05:24And there are other coaches who I think I could bring into this conversation.
05:28So that was kind of a momentous occasion, I thought.
05:32And you saw it in the locker room, because he handed out the game balls, and then John Lynch showed
05:37up and threw it right back at Kyle.
05:39And the appreciation from the players, I think, flowed pretty heavily.
05:43Yes, and I do think that what Kyle is doing in this era is a little bit tougher than what
05:48Bill Walsh did in his era, because there was no salary cap.
05:52And if you look at some of those rosters that the Niners had, they were able to heap big money
05:57on a lot of superstars.
05:58And so the teams that he had were going to be automatically better than what these teams have been.
06:04And the other piece of it is Bill Walsh was an innovator, because we all can put a name on
06:09it, the West Coast offense.
06:11And Bill Walsh, he was the one who created the West Coast offense.
06:14But what Kyle Shanahan has created, I don't know if you can actually put a name on it.
06:18But look around the league, and a lot of these offenses are doing what Kyle does with pre-stap motion.
06:24And now even the cheat motion that they do, where Juszczyk will kind of do like a diagonal motion backward,
06:31not forward, because that's illegal.
06:33But he'll do like a 45-degree backward, and then on the snap, he'll go forward.
06:37Look at the game from Sunday.
06:39Denver was doing the exact same thing.
06:41So Shanahan's innovations, while not name-worthy, they are equally important.
06:46Wow, four games in, plus look at what he did last year with all of those injuries.
06:51Nobody has outcoached Kyle Shanahan the last year and a half in this league.
06:55And I know people will say, Mike McDonald, and, you know, you can have that opinion.
07:00I wouldn't even come close to trading the two.
