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Committing a grave error as a head coach that potentially led to your team’s devastating loss in the Super Bowl is one thing. However, having the audacity to stand by that mistake days after the defeat is a whole different story. Nevertheless, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has made the decision to do just that.
Shanahan’s choice to receive the opening kickoff in overtime during Super Bowl 58 ultimately backfired when Patrick Mahomes led the Kansas City Chiefs to victory with a touchdown. At the time, Shanahan justified his decision by claiming that he wanted the ball for a second time. However, the 49ers players have stated that they never discussed a plan for overtime and were unaware of the NFL’s playoff overtime rules. Not an ideal situation!
Despite having the opportunity to backtrack on his decision, Shanahan has instead chosen to defend it further. He stated, “It’s just something we talked about. None of us have a ton of experience with it. But we went through all the analytics and talked to those guys. We just thought it would be better. We wanted the ball third. If both teams matched and scored, we wanted to be the ones who had the chance to go win. Got that field goal, so knew we had to hold them to at least a field goal, and if we did, then we thought it was in our hands after that.” Quite a bold choice!
In theory, Shanahan’s reasoning seems logical. By choosing to receive the ball first, the 49ers would have had the opportunity to possess the ball one more time than the Chiefs, and that possession would have determined the winner. However, this assumes that both teams would have scored on their first possessions.
Unfortunately for Shanahan, Kansas City received the ball with the knowledge of how many points it needed to score in order to secure victory. Even if San Francisco had scored a touchdown on their opening drive, Chiefs star Chris Jones revealed that his team had planned to go for a two-point conversion and the win if they had also scored a touchdown. Therefore, Shanahan’s grand plan would not have made a difference either way.
It’s safe to say that the next team to go into overtime in the NFL playoffs will likely not choose to receive the ball first.
According to the Source brobible.com