Shanahan is in distinguished company in that regard, along with Marv Levy of the Buffalo Bills, Bud Grant of the Minnesota Vikings, Ted Marchibroda as offensive coordinator with Washington and Buffalo, and longtime Vikings defensive coordinator Jerry Burns. Levy and Grant are Hall of Famers, while Marchibroda and Burns are highly regarded, yet none of them achieved Lombardi’s glory.
For Shanahan, it’s a past littered with disappointments in big games that, as mentioned above, doesn’t bode well for the future.
In each of Shanahan’s Super Bowl losses (Super Bowl LI as the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator against the Patriots, and Super Bowls LIV and LVIII as the 49ers’ head coach against the Chiefs), his teams held 10-point leads before losing. In each loss, which includes the only two overtime games in Super Bowl history, Shanahan’s offenses have struggled when it mattered most, as evidenced by a total of nine offensive points in the fourth quarter.
In his career as a head coach, Shanahan has an 8-4 record in the playoffs, which equates to a .667 winning percentage that ranks as the highest in league history without winning a championship. NFL or a Super Bowl, according to NFL Research.
Since 2010, the 49ers have reached seven conference title games, the most in the NFC. However, they have a 3-4 record in those seven games and have not won a Super Bowl. In that same period, the Patriots and Chiefs are the only other teams to have made six or more trips to the championship round, and each franchise has claimed three Super Bowl crowns in that span.
Emerging as the NFL team of the 1980s, the 49ers won four Super Bowls in the decade and triumphed once again to go 5-0 in their first five Super Bowl appearances. However, the franchise has lost its last three Super Bowls.
Once again, the 49ers are Super Bowl contenders heading into the 2024 season, locked in and loaded with Pro Bowl talent on each side of the ball.
Will this be the season where San Francisco returns to the top of the NFL and Shanahan finally gets over the hump? Or has history already given us a glimpse of how unfortunate the road ahead will be?