Even before the gutting loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan had to deal with the perception that he struggled to lead his team to victory in big games. Now, after his team blew a fourth-quarter lead for the third consecutive time in a Super Bowl, he’s having to answer for that yet again.
During a press conference this week, Kyle Shanahan offered his reaction to the narrative that he can’t win games, and he was pretty firm in refuting it.
“I mean, you’d love to fix perception because I would love to win one for what I know about football and I know if I fixed perception that means I did everything I wanted to do, which isn’t to fix perception, it’s to win a damn Super Bowl,” Shanahan told reporters on Tuesday. “But I also know when you say ‘big games,’ we’ve had to win a bunch of big games to get to Super Bowls. We’ve won a lot of big games here. We’ve won a lot of big games to get into playoffs. The fact that we keep getting there shows you guys how much we’ve been able to win big games and I think you guys are aware of that. But these two Super Bowls have been tough losing to Kansas City. But to think that if we win that, it means I can win a big game? No, that means our team won the Super Bowl. That’s what I understand. You guys can have any narrative you want, but the success or the failure, it comes down to one game and I hope that I can be a part of a 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 an extremely inaccurate statement.”
Right or wrong, this has been a criticism of Shanahan and the Niners in recent years, and Sunday night’s loss to the Chiefs certainly did not help shake that perception.
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