When the Super Bowl LVIII showdown between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs went to overtime, the Niners surprised many fans by choosing to go on offense first after winning the coin toss, given the new rules that allowed both teams to have a possession. But head coach Kyle Shanahan explained why after the game.
By getting the ball second, the Chiefs had the advantage of knowing that they needed a field goal to tie and a touchdown to win after the Niners got a field goal on their possession. But Kyle Shanahan explained that they chose to go on offense first so that if both teams scored and they went to sudden death, they would have the ball.
“It’s just something we talked about,” Shanahan said after the game according to Pro Football Talk. “None of us have a ton of experience with it. But we went through all the analytics and talked to those guys. We just thought it would be better. We wanted the ball third. If both teams matched and scored, we wanted to be the ones who had the chance to go win. So got that field goal, so knew we had to hold them to at least a field goal and if we did, we thought it was in our hands after that.”
Ultimately, it didn’t work out for the Niners because they never got the ball back a second time, but there was some strategy behind the controversial decision.
