Christian McCaffrey is coming off winning the NFL’s rushing title. (Yahoo Sports/Henry Russell)
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Kyle Shanahan was defensive, and for good reason.
You don’t hear about bad coaches or teams being unable to win big games. That label is always stuck on the ones who are good enough in the regular season to be championship contenders and often make playoff runs, just without a title at the end.
Shanahan was good enough to be offensive coordinator of an Atlanta Falcons team that was up 28-3 in a Super Bowl, he and the San Francisco 49ers led by 10 in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LIV five seasons ago and they led the Kansas City Chiefs in overtime of the Super Bowl last postseason. Shanahan and the 49ers are obviously good enough to win it all. They just haven’t.
Yet the questions were coming. Shanahan has been to three Super Bowls as a coach or coordinator and is 0-3, losing a lead each time. Suddenly Shanahan’s decision to take the ball first in overtime of the Super Bowl this past February became another easy punchline, though it wasn’t an obvious mistake and maybe not a mistake at all.
Logic has little place in most sports debates, but Shanahan tried.
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“When you say ‘big games,’ we had to win a bunch of big games to get to Super Bowls,” Shanahan said. “We’ve won a lot of big games here. We won a lot of big games to get in the playoffs. The fact we keep getting there shows you guys how much we’ve won big games.
“I hope I can be part of a team that wins the game at the end of the year. But to…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-offseason-power-rankings-no-3-san-francisco-49ers-still-looking-to-get-their-super-bowl-124110206.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-07-29 12:41:10
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