Plenty at stake for Super Bowl coaches Reid and Shanahan
Every time another Game 7 comes around, we invariably hear that those two words — “Game Seven” — are the best we have in sports. And every time you hear that, you think right away that pro football would like a word. Because whether pro football is your sport or not, it still owns these two words: Super Bowl.
That’s always the big game in this country, never bigger than this year. Oh sure. The Super Bowl has never felt bigger than it does with this one, and that means even for the coaches.
The stakes are always tremendous on the night when the country goes to a pro football game. They just seem even higher this year, and not just because of the marriage — relax, not that kind of marriage — between Taylor Swift and the NFL, all because of her relationship with Travis Kelce.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that we will get a game for the ages in Vegas, as much as we hope we will. But just on our way into Super Bowl LVIII, we have as many good storylines as we’ve ever had on Super Sunday.
It all starts with two storied franchises. One, the 49ers, has appeared in seven Super Bowls already and won five. The Chiefs are about to play in their sixth, have won three, are trying to become the first team in 20 years to win two in a row.
The Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, now the best player of this time in pro football, with his sights firmly set on someday being called the greatest of all time. He’s the biggest and most visible sports star going in American sports, and Kelce, because of his own greatness as a player and because of Swift, is right behind him.
And you know the 49ers have stars of their own, starting with Christian McCaffrey, whose father once won a Super Bowl with the old 49ers, and quarterback Brock Purdy, once the last player selected in the NFL Draft, trying to write one of the best Cinderella stories in the history of his sport if the 49ers can knock off Mahomes and Kelce and Taylor Swift and the Chiefs.
There is something else, though, adding salt to this game, not that it needs much more, because the stakes really are as high for the coaches as they are for any of the players who will run out on the field a little after 3:30 p.m. local time and feel, as the old Giants GM Ernie Accorsi likes to say, as if they’ve once again arrived on another planet.
You better believe we’ve got Mahomes and Purdy and Kelce and George Kittle and the defense of a legendary coordinator named Steve Spagnuolo against the 49ers offense. We’ve got McCaffrey, as valuable a player as there was this season, and Nick Bosa and Deebo Samuel, ready to fully introduce himself to the country.
But you better believe we’ve got Andy Reid vs. Kyle Shanahan for a second time, this matchup between them feeling even more compelling than the first one, when Mahomes finally brought the Chiefs back from 10 down in the fourth quarter to win.
Reid, at 65, if his Chiefs can win again, will cement his own legacy as one of the best to ever work an NFL sideline. If the Chiefs do win, he will have won his third Super Bowl in his fifth appearance in the big game, and join the small list of coaches who have won at least three Super Bowls:
Bill Belichick (6).
Chuck Noll (4).
Bill Walsh (3).
Joe Gibbs (3).
If Reid does get another Lombardi Trophy, he then moves himself up from the coaches who have won two Super Bowls: Vince Lombardi, Don Shula, Bill Parcells, Jimmy Johnson, Shanahan’s dad Mike, Tom Flores, Tom Coughlin, who got his two off Belichick. Reid has already shown he can stand the test of time. But it is not just Mahomes playing against history in Super Bowl as much as he is playing against a 49ers team trying to put that franchise in an exalted place with a sixth Super Bowl win, which would tie the Niners with the Patriots and Steelers. Reid is doing the same thing, as he continues to write one of the best second acts any coach ever has.
He and Mahomes aren’t Belichick and Tom Brady yet. But if they get another one in Vegas, you have to say they sure might be trending in that direction.
So, Reid needs this game, as he does try to make his own history. So, too, does Kyle Shanahan, looking to finally put his own points on the board in the big game, and to certify his own bona fides as one of the top guys, in what is still such a fine first act for him. But he was the offensive coordinator for the Falcons when they blew a 28-3 lead to the Patriots in Super Bowl LI. If you remember the game, you know:
It wasn’t just the Falcons defense falling down in the second half, there were some costly mistakes with play-calling.
Then there was the first Chiefs49ers Super Bowl, four years ago in Miami, when the 49ers watched the Chiefs finish the game on a 21-0 run. Reid won his first Super Bowl that night, having lost one in the past with the Eagles when they went up against Belichick and Brady. Shanahan did not. Reid had Mahomes in Miami. Shanahan did not. He had Jimmy Garoppolo.
Shanahan was asked the other day about the possibility that his team will fall short again. Here’s what he said:
“I deal with it the same way if we win,” Shanahan said. “I celebrate with our team. I celebrate with my family and I move on with the rest of my life, which is being a father or son and coaching and working and doing all that. Narrative, good or bad, is just a narrative … I just don’t want regrets.”
It was Parcells who famously said that when a game looks even, bet the team that needs it more. This game looks even, even if the 49ers were established as a slight favorite. But that notion goes out the window when it is the biggest game. And yet: When you look at just the coaching matchup, it is fair to say that Shanahan is the one who does need this game more, just because he doesn’t want to walk away with regrets again.
Once it was Reid who was called the best coach out there who hadn’t won it all, until he started all this winning in Kansas City. Now Shanahan will get tagged that way if his 49ers go to 0-2 against Reid and the Chiefs.
This game does have so many good plotlines, so much history, so much star power. The coaches are very much a part of it, too. Stakes are as high for them as everybody else in a town of big winners and big losers. Just makes the big game feel even better.