‘Captain America’ Lynch enjoys success as 49ers GM
MIAMI — John Lynch had just finished another season in the relatively cushy job as television analyst when he decided to call Kyle Shanahan three years ago and offer up his services as a general manager if Shanahan got hired as head coach in San Francisco.
Shanahan, who was on a Super Bowl run as Atlanta’s offensive coordinator, was seeking a general manager he could work well with and jumped at the opportunity.
“Kyle was real busy, he was coaching a team,” Lynch said. “And you know how Kyle talks. So he said ‘Hey, I’m going to have this dude, his name’s Jed, give you a call. I said, “Yeah, I know Jed.’”
Niners CEO Jed York then invited Lynch for an interview in the Bay Area, starting the process that led to Shanahan and Lynch getting hired to team up to turn around a franchise mired in losing and dysfunction.
That decision to leave his job at Fox and get back working with an NFL team worked about as well as everything else Lynch seems to do in his life.
Lynch has helped build a roster that has the Niners in the Super Bowl this week against the Kansas City Chiefs, earning him the Pro Football Writers of America award as the league’s top executive in 2019.
Lynch is now looking to have an almost perfect weekend. He’s a finalist for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in voting to be conducted Saturday and could follow that up with a Super Bowl championship as an executive to join the title he won as a player in Tampa Bay 17 years ago.
“I’ve dreamt about it and here we are,” Lynch said. “It would be a real nice weekend.”
Lynch and Shanahan have formed the perfect pair in San Francisco. The two had never worked together before but were familiar with each other’s accomplishments. Shanahan studied Lynch’s play when he arrived as an assistant coach in Tampa Bay a year after Lynch had left for Denver.
Lynch then played his final four seasons for Kyle’s father, Mike, and then spent years calling Kyle’s games as an analyst on Fox.
Their team-building philosophies were so similar that when both were given a test by the 49ers on how to allocate 150 “points” as a fake salary cap to build a roster, they came up with nearly identical versions.
“Maybe they hired us for that reason,” Lynch said.
The two complement each other well. Lynch’s background is on defense as the former hard-hitting safety who played a key part on successful defenses in Tampa Bay and Denver, while Shanahan is considered an offensive guru who is one of the best play-callers in the game.
Lynch has the warmer personality and often plays the role of “good cop,” while Shanahan is far more blunt and serves as the “bad cop” when needed.
“Usually people like that just on average, usually, I think, I’m like, all right, the person’s got to be somewhat phony,” Shanahan said. “What’s he really like? No one is really Captain America. So, you’re waiting to see how they are really. That’s probably the opposite of how I am. But, then you get with John day in and day out, and that’s genuinely who he is . ... To have that type of personality that’s just exactly who he is and on top of that to be one of the most violent, physical players I’ve ever seen, I think it’s as cool of a combination as there is.”