Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
49ers players said that they did not know that overtime rules are different in the playoffs.
Super Bowl LVIII ended with the Kansas City Chiefs hoisting the Lombardi Trophy for the third time in a five-year span. Patrick Mahomes is inevitable and the Chiefs are officially a dynasty with nowhere to go, amazingly, but up.
Of the three titles that KC has won in this era, two of them have come against the San Francisco 49ers. It is a special kind of thing to be a Dynasty That Never Was the way that San Francisco is right now as they have to watch all of the talk circling the Chiefs and wonder if they would be on the receiving end of that if not for a handful of moments in their last two title-game matchups.
Just like in their first Super Bowl meeting, the Chiefs at one point trailed the 49ers by 10. Obviously they overcame it, but this time around it took almost an entire extra period to do so as we witnessed the second-ever Super Bowl to go to overtime. Ironically Kyle Shanahan was on the wrong end of the first as the offensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons and he was again as the head coach of the Niners.
Shanahan is coming under a lot of fire on the morning after the game for not having his players properly prepared for the specific circumstances that overtime provided. You may recall that the 2021 Divisional Round loss by the Buffalo Bills (incidentally against the Chiefs) led to a change in rule where both teams are now guaranteed to possess the ball in overtime, even if the first team scores a touchdown. This is unique to the postseason.
Apparently, according to The Ringer, 49ers players were not prepared for this. Seriously.
The Chiefs’ overtime plan worked out exactly how they had hoped—and it wasn’t by accident. Kansas City safety Justin Reid told The Ringer that the Chiefs had first discussed the new overtime rules as far back as training camp. Defensive lineman Chris Jones told me players were prepared for what to expect if the Super Bowl went to overtime.
“We talked through this for two weeks,” Jones said. “How we was going to give the ball to the opponent; if they scored, we was [sic] going for two at the end of the game. We rehearsed it.”
The 49ers did not do the same. Multiple San Francisco players said after the game that they were not aware that the overtime rules are different in the playoffs than they are in the regular season, and strategy discussions over how to handle the overtime period did not occur as a team. Defensive lineman Arik Armstead said he learned the details of the postseason rule when it was shown on the Allegiant Stadium jumbotron during a TV timeout after regulation. Fullback Kyle Juszczyk said he assumed the 49ers asked to receive when they won the toss because that’s what you do in the regular season, when a touchdown wins the game. “I guess that’s not the case. I don’t really know the strategy,” Juszczyk said.
Needless to say this is far from ideal and it is quite the indictment of preparation, or lack of it really, that Shanahan applied to the 49ers in the lead up to the Super Bowl.
Details matter in sports and it is most often when teams are well-trained in them that they turn into elite operations. It was one of the hallmarks of the New England Patriots’ dynasty. You would think that having served as the offensive coordinator in the only other Super Bowl that had gone to overtime before (against those Patriots) that Shanahan would be prepared for the possibility and therefore would have discussed it with his team. Apparently, he did not.
San Francisco won the toss to start extra time and elected to receive the ball which definitely suggests that they didn’t consider the long game. While they only kicked a field goal, even if they had scored a touchdown the Chiefs were (in their own words) prepared to go for two and the win if they scored a touchdown. Kyle Shanahan set Patrick Mahomes of all people up to be as aggressive as possible and even purposefully put them in a position where they were in entirely four-down territory given the circumstances at play.
Kyle Shanahan is one of the best play-callers in the NFL, but this is a really big mistake and it cost him a chance at the Super Bowl. No big deal!
