© Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Thursday was something of a catharsis for 49ers general manager John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan from a public-facing perspective. In their last media availability for the foreseeable future (at least until the NFL combine at the end of this month), the pair talked about their view of the devastating 31-20 Super Bowl LIV loss, what their approach is to the offseason, and, especially from Shanahan’s perspective, whether there were any regrets.
Any Shanahan regrets? None. Well… maybe one
When you lose your first Super Bowl as an offensive coordinator after leading 28-3 in the third quarter, and then you lose your first Super Bowl as a head coach leading 20-10 in with nine minutes left in the fourth quarter, you’re play-calling decisions will be placed under a microscope.
From Shanahan’s perspective, there were no regrets. Zilch. He thought the 49ers “had the game won.”
“No, I’ve been through it all. Probably a thousand times in the last three days,” Shanahan said. “There actually isn’t (a regret). I’m very excited with how that game went up to that point. I know what we didn’t get done and what happened, but a lot of credit I give to Kansas City. Making that third-and-15 isn’t a high-percentage deal. It has been with [Patrick] Mahomes this year. Throwing to the fast receiver in [Kansas City Chiefs WR] Tyreek [Hill] got behind our defense. Really thought we had the game won right there.”
Shanahan said he was “very happy” with how he and his coaching staff managed the game, but there was one regret following that infamous missed throw from Jimmy Garoppolo to Emmanuel Sanders.
“The one thing I was contemplating that was hard on me is after we missed the post to [WR] Emmanuel [Sanders], I knew how tired our guys were,” Shanahan said. “That was my hardest thing, that I really wanted to call a timeout there to give them the energy to beat the corners again because it was very hard how they were going.
“The reason I didn’t is because if we didn’t get that first down, we’d still have three. They couldn’t run the clock out that way. They ended up busting that long run which made it so it didn’t matter anyway. In hindsight with that, I wish I had called a timeout just so they could have recovered a little bit more and had more energy to get away from what the DBs were doing.”
The time management at the end of the first half
As for the end of the first half, when Shanahan let the Chiefs run down the clock inside of a minute, he said there were no regrets, and pointed to that as a moment that ensured the 49ers’ success.
It might also be a bit of whiplash from that Week 10 loss to the Seattle Seahawks (which was also evidenced in the way the 49ers ended the first half against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 13), when the 49ers could have run down the clock and ensured a win, but instead had three-straight incompletions. Shanahan said then that he wished he “would have taken three knees instead of doing that,” and pointed to that game as a reason for his arguably conservative approach to ending the first half of Super Bowl LIV.
Asked why he wasn’t aiming to go for a touchdown on that half-ending drive, Shanahan bristled.
“It was, depending on how the first play went,” Shanahan said. “If I would have called a screen and that would have gone for 10 yards, or called a run that went for 10 yards, would that have been considered aggressive? Those are the things that are extremely weird to me when I hear from other people. Yeah, I called a run. I don’t think that’s not aggressive. I’ve call runs sometimes on third-and-10. I think we were averaging about seven yards a carry at the time. We have a number of explosives. So, I like the run call.”
It was that Seahawks ending that showed the downside of running out the clock is outweighed by the downside of trying to go for it and handing the ball back to an elite NFL quarterback.
“I mean, that one I’m very confident in what happened there. I would do that over every single time, especially when you’re getting the ball in the third. That’s what I felt was one of the main reasons we were up 20-10 in the fourth.”
The 49ers’ new cap space reality… but desire to retain Arik Armstead
San Francisco is currently projected to have in $13.86 million in cap space for 2020, and that’s with Emmanuel Sanders, Jimmie Ward, Arik Armstead and 11 other unrestricted free agents unsigned, and two looming, monumental extensions yet to be negotiated for DeForest Buckner and George Kittle (likely in that order).
Assuming the team does the obvious and cuts both Jerick McKinnon and Marquise Goodwin, that number moves up to $22.06 million, per OverTheCap.
There, of course, are other means of creating additional space, like restructuring Dee Ford (could create up to roughly $10 million of cap space next season) or Jimmy Garoppolo’s contract (could create up to roughly $15 million of cap space next season), but the reality is the 49ers are spread thin with their cap situation. They’ve budgeted for the Buckner and Kittle extensions and can likely afford Jimmie Ward back, but Arik Armstead and Emmanuel Sanders? That might be cutting it close.
“There are some realities that are different,” Lynch said. “I think an analogy for me is the first couple years, I think we brought year one 14 free agents up here. Those days aren’t happening any more. We can’t go to the grocery store and say, ‘I’ll have that, I’ll have that, I’ll have that.’
“It’s more like, ‘I’ll have that, but I might have to put that back.’ There are tradeoffs.
“We’d love to keep everybody. This team is special. There’s a special feel to it. We hope that’s the case. It’s probably not likely, it just doesn’t happen in this league.”
Despite that “tightening up,” Lynch was pretty clear about wanting to retain Armstead, who said on Wednesday that he isn’t opposed to being franchise-tagged (at which point the 49ers could also trade him).
“We want to find a way to keep him and make him a part of the 49ers for a long time.”
Dee Ford not currently expected to have surgery
For his entire professional career, Dee Ford has dealt with knee/quad tendinitis stemming from an MCL tear he sustained while playing at Auburn, and returned from too soon. The full story from earlier this season is here.
He suggested that surgery would be on the table, and he would have to try something new to get rid of that pain for next season.
“We’ll go further once we get done at the end of the year,” Ford said September 24. “We’ll see what we have to do. We have to do something, but this is nothing that’s going to hinder this year. Like I said, I’ve been through worse. So we’ll put a bag on it.”
Despite that, Lynch said he was unaware of Ford requiring any surgery this offseason.
“Not as we know right now. We’ll have those conversations,” Lynch said. “But, I think Dee is in good health right now. He was dealing with some of those tendinitis issues and such, but I think he’s in a good spot right now.”
Lynch and Shanahan’s final words on 2019 campaign
John Lynch had never experienced a Super Bowl loss, saying he’d only heard about how painful it was. He experienced that firsthand last Sunday, but stressed that the season was a clear positive, despite the brutality of its conclusion.
“To me it’s about what you do going forward. I think the one thing I would say, too, for all the negativity, or perceived negativity, I also know that I got off the plane, I went to my daughter’s basketball game, I can’t tell you how many people came up and said thank you. To all the people out there that appreciate that, appreciate the effort of the team, Kyle and his staff, we are appreciative.
“I think a big part of the turnaround, getting to the Super Bowl, now our goal was to win the Super Bowl, we all know that, but just the feeling that has on this community, the Faithful, the fans, when we go on the road, at home, having the excitement back in here in Levi’s, a lot of positive things transpired. We can’t forget about that.”
That 28-3 Super Bowl disaster with the Atlanta Falcons maybe prepared Shanahan slightly better for the feeling of Sunday’s loss, but didn’t ease it. Here’s his final answer (video below):
I think our guys believed and knew how good we were this year. They knew how close and how easily we could have finished that. We didn’t. That’s stuff you’ve got to live with and deal with. Everybody wants to make it a little bit more than it is. It’s hard to lose a Super Bowl, I promise, because it’s really hard to get there. It’s exhausting. It’s a grind. You want to finish it off the right way.
I say it all the time, one team is happy at the end of the year. I haven’t been happy yet at the end of the year in my career. I plan on it happening someday. I plan on it happening every year.
I also know the reality of this sport. It’s funny, I’ve done this long enough that I know why I do it. That’s why I wanted a general manager who does it for the right reasons, I want the players who do it for the right reasons. We love football. We love it out here. I thought it was weird, I thought I was getting set up, but I couldn’t believe how good this place treated me when we were 0-9, when we were 4-12. It was better than any other place I’d ever been in how people treat me. Now they treat me still very good, even actually a little better this year. It’s as cool as it can be…
I know there’s a lot of people saying I’m not that good out there.
What I can say to you guys is, it doesn’t change how we feel inside when people tell us how good you are. You have to be even that strong, it doesn’t change how you are inside when people tell you how bad you are. It doesn’t matter. We’re playing the sport. Everyone else can evaluate it all you want.
I am proud as can be of how our team handled everything, how I did, how John did, how everyone did. Now we can deal with whatever because we’re proud of how we handled it. If I wasn’t proud of that, then the stuff would be very hard on me. That’s what’s cool when you get in these moments and you can feel all this, it makes you stronger. That is a cool feeling. Not to mention how hard grieving the loss of a Super Bowl is. We’ll start that process.”
Kyle Shanahan’s long final answer today on #49ers:
“I haven’t been happy yet at the end of the year in my career. I plan on it happening someday…
I’m proud as can be of how our team handled everything. Now we can deal with whatever because we’re proud of how we handled it.” pic.twitter.com/SfTE42sQqG
— Jake Hutchinson (@hutchdiesel) February 6, 2020
Yes, Jimmy is still “the guy”
It was one of those questions that was always going to be asked of Shanahan and Lynch in some form or another: How do they feel about Garoppolo?
The answer was, as you’d expect, no different than it’s been in the past: Garoppolo is still the 49ers’ guy.
“I think Jimmy is one of the main reasons we got to the Super Bowl,” Shanahan said. “I think he overcame a lot. This was his first year in his career going through an entire NFL season. He still doesn’t have as many starts and stuff as [Cleveland Browns QB] Baker Mayfield.
“I think he had a hell of a first year truly playing the position, especially coming off an ACL where you have to fight through that a ton as a quarterback, where your rhythm and everything is not there at the beginning of the year. For him to be like that and to not let the pressure get to him, and to improve as the year went, I think says a ton about Jimmy. I can’t tell you how much I loved coaching the guy as a player and as a person this year.”