Kyle Shanahan played not to lose — so the 49ers lost

SANTA CLARA – There are so many reasons the 49ers lost to the Chiefs on Sunday. Too many reasons to count, perhaps.

And frankly, this reason seems trivial compared to Brock Purdy’s three interceptions, the Niners’ defense’s failure to stop Patrick Mahomes on third down, and the lopsided mismatches that Kansas City boasted on both lines of scrimmage.

But it’s also an issue that has plagued the Niners for years. It doesn’t seem to be getting any better.

Sunday was the biggest contest of the 49ers’ season to date. It was circled on the calendar the moment the schedule was released. A rematch of the heavyweight title match last season, and the champ was coming to town. The stakes might not have been the same, but this was anything but “just another game” for the Niners.

And yet Kyle Shanahan treated it like he treats all games: He played not to lose.

So the 49ers lost.

Again, it’s only one entry on the laundry list of San Francisco transgressions, but an error in fundamental philosophy — one that has been known for longer than Shanahan has been the Niners’ head coach — is so much harder to fix than anything Purdy or Fred Warner did against the Chiefs.

Because I’m not in the meeting rooms (and no one wants to give me great second-hand accounts of what is happening in those rooms), I try to provide deference to Shanahan and the 49ers coaches when it comes to play calling and scheme.

But situational football isn’t nearly as complex. And when faced with binary decisions to be aggressive or be conservative in big situations — fourth downs, end-of-half situations, and two-point conversions — Shanahan almost always opts for the latter.

It’s the trademark move of an ideologue. Shanahan has a script in his mind on how he will win games. And far more often than not, since 2019, he’s been right.

However, that level of confidence in his plan coincides with a deep discomfort with risk.

Some coaches have a devil-may-care attitude. They have fun calling a game. This is an intellectual exercise for Shanahan — he wants to keep the devils at bay.

As such, Shanahan would never do anything like Andy Reid did at the end of the Chiefs’ first possession Sunday: he faked a punt.

It failed — the Niners had it sniffed out and left their first-team defense on the field. Still, it highlighted the aggression that the Chiefs — a team still at the vanguard of scheme — play within all phases of the ball. They play to win — by any and all means necessary. Kansas City will always keep their foot on the pedal to make that happen.

When I say that Shanahan has never run a fake punt, I mean it literally. The one fake punt this team has run (called back by penalty) was when punter Mitch Wisnowsky, on his own accord, made a run for a first down.

Shanahan speaks of such tactics with an open disdain. It’s beneath him and his team.

“You’d like to build a team to where you don’t feel you have to… rely on something like that to get a win. I like to feel that you can do it between the offense and defense of just beating someone,” he said earlier this month.

“I don’t like to trick people into winning the game,” he said last January.

But it’s not beneath Reid, who is arguably the greatest coach in NFL history. Isn’t that strange?