Kyle Shanahan paces around the sidelines at the best of times. He’s got Mike Hussey-itis in that sense.
In high-stress situations, you can see that he’s always looking for something to do with his hands, usually flicking his mic on and off. When he calls a good run, he struts. Even though the 49ers have kind of got away from classic Shanahan/Kubiak principles in recent years as Brock Purdy has matured into a truly good player on his own, you can feel at soul-level that Shanahan would prefer a 17-yard run to a 27-yard pass.
On Friday morning, on the very same MCG that Dustin Martin used to strut around when he had Aiden Corr or Heath Shaw or some other victim on him inside forward 50 and he cleared it out, Kyle Shanahan did a lot of strutting. He, like Dusty, knew he had them beat.
On both offence and defence, Shanahan’s 49ers demolished the heavily fancied would-be super-team LA Rams. Some of that must have been travel, but more of it was that the 49ers were brilliant on both sides of the ball.
But as I watched that game, played in my own city on a ground that I’m so familiar with, I was reminded of the fragility of the 49ers’ specific kind of excellence. As I saw Shanahan strut around, I just couldn’t help but wonder how it would look in week 10.
Would he have the same swagger? Could he?
This 49er squad is going to be driven by the old guys still having it or otherwise. In week 1, the old guys had it. But if you dig into the history of the guys that drove the win, you can see some issues cropping up as the marathon of an NFL season gets longer.
Trent Williams at 38 blanketed Myles Garrett, who is now on IR. Mike Evans, 33, converted five of the Niners seven first downs for the night. In a breakout Kaelon Black game, Christian McCaffrey at 30 still outproduced his rookie backfield mate. All of those key players have missed significant chunks of time over the last two seasons with injuries, a factor which doesn’t tend to get better as you age.
On defence Fred Warner, 30 in November, essentially shut off the middle of the field for the Rams and turned them into essentially the 2025 Dolphins by EPA/play on the day. Nick Bosa, 28 and coming off the second ACL injury of his career, had no sacks but was dominant in the run game and changed the geography of the Rams’ offensive plan.
Over the last two seasons, just the guys I listed have failed to start 47 games. Over that time, most if not all have suffered major season-ending injuries. I didn’t even include George Kittle who just returned from a ruptured Achilles in eight months.
Now you might argue that actually Shanahan doesn’t need the whole crew for the whole season. If you look at how injured they were, including at quarterback, last season and still found a way to win 12 games and have the 8th best offence in the league by EPA. But that isnt’ the point of this 49er team.
Beyond that, while Shanahan gets a lot of credit for being a genius-level offensive creator, he doesn’t get enough credit for building an environment where every defensive coordinator he has hired for basically a decade (except Steve Wilks) has become a head coach. Shanahan clearly has the ability build an incubator that spits out competitive players.
He is like the Hadron collider for competitive football.
But being competitive isn’t the point for the old guys. They are here to make good on the promise of their last decade and win the Super Bowl. To do it, they basically need to have a Golden State in 2022 type of run, where the old guys were still the centrepieces but some fresh faces helped along the way.
In order to build that kind of environment, the players need to gel and mesh. They need to be able to function within Shanahan’s complex system of perfectly timed motions that spring runners and receivers free.
True excellence is possible within this 49er ecosystem. The addition of Mike Evans to an already strong offence, as well as health across the board from key players to start the season, is a good start. So is demolishing the clear Super Bowl favourites and driving the murmurings of a full-blown nervous football breakdown if they have another bad loss to start the season.
But for it to work, in true San Francisco fashion, the house needs to stand on ground that’s been shaky before. The 49ers are a mansion built on a fault line.
There’s true fragility in their excellence.