The games are the best and the worst of it, all in the same dang breath. The guy calling offensive plays for the last San Francisco 49ers team to win a Super Bowl, 25 Januarys ago, is a passenger now, same as the rest of us.
Well, kind of. A passenger with benefits.
“I watch all his practices (remotely), I watch all his games, so I have a feeling, going into the game, what the game plan is,” Mike Shanahan, the former Broncos coach and San Francisco offensive coordinator, says of his son, Kyle, whose Niners host Green Bay late Sunday afternoon in the NFC championship game.
“So for me, it’s not just watching … you put the hours in during the week. You know what direction they’re going to go. That’s fun for me. To be able to watch that, from my perspective, has been very fun.”
Not being able to control anything, having to watch the reality show play out from a distant skybox with the grandkids? Not so much.
“You’re much more nervous as an observer than when you’re coaching,” Shanahan continued. “Because your mind is so busy while you’re coaching that you don’t have the chance to think at all.”
Think on this, though: No matter who comes out on top in Santa Clara, Shanny wins — it’s just a matter of to what degree.
Kyle, 40, is a victory away from making the Shanahans the first father-son combo to ever lead two different teams to Super Bowls as head coaches. Packers coach Matt LaFleur is an extended member of the family — having served on Mike’s staff in Washington as a quarterbacks coach from 2010-13, where Kyle was his offensive coordinator and direct supervisor, and having worked in the same capacity under Shanny The Younger in Atlanta from 2015-16.
“It’s great,” Mike said of LaFleur. “I just think about that — Kyle was (in Houston), Matt comes in and helps Kyle out as an offensive assistant. We’ve all been in that situation. He got to know Matt quite well, his work ethic, his work habits.
“And then when (Kyle) was a coordinator at Washington, when I asked him if he knew anybody who would be a good candidate for quarterback coach, he said, ‘Oh, Matt would be great. Good character. Great work ethic.’
“So we brought a few young guys in. You’ve got Matt, you’ve got Sean (McVay) … you’ve got a lot of guys who had to go through tough experiences that help a young coach grow.”
Those cocky young D.C. bucks from a decade ago are seemingly everywhere now, spreading The Gospel of Shanny — or some variation therein.
McVay, 33, the grandson of former Niners GM John McVay and another alum of the Redskins staff from 2010-13, steered the Rams to the Super Bowl last winter in his second season at the helm. LaFleur, 40, is in his first campaign in cheese country after spending the fall of 2018 as the offensive coordinator of the Tennessee Titans, the wild-card that’s wrecked what’s left of the AFC playoff bracket and visits Kansas City in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader.
“I think it starts with how hungry you are,” Shanahan said of his coaching family tree. “With coaches, how much do they want to learn the game?
“Like Kyle, when he went to Tampa Bay (as a quality control coach in 2004), one of the first things I said was, ‘Look at the defensive coaches you’ve got on your staff. You’ve got Monte Kiffin, you’ve got Mike Tomlin, you’ve got Raheem Morris.’ I said, ‘I’m not sure how long you’re going to be in Tampa, so every free minute you have in the day, you’ve got to pick their brains and find out everything they know about how to coach their positions. After you’re gone, they’re not going to share that anymore.’ What an opportunity for a young guy to come in and not only sit in meetings with a guy like Jon Gruden, but to have a chance to sit in with those defensive guys.”
Some lessons were learned the hard way. The whispers of nepotism. The pushback — which looks positively prophetic in hindsight — against quarterback Johnny Manziel taking the reins in Cleveland. The blown lead in Super Bowl LI against New England. The battle scars.
“The good part about it is, even though we haven’t done it on the coaching staff together, we kind of lived it through the years,” Mike Shanahan said. “He really understands how hard it is to get there and how hard he’s worked to get to this point. So it’s kind of fun to see him in this position right now, in the NFC championship game, getting ready for this, knowing that it’ll be a game that he’ll remember forever.”
Dad will, too. Even if it kills him.
