SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Four days before Christmas and the night before playing the Indianapolis Colts, Kyle Shanahan stood in front of his San Francisco 49ers team in a meeting room at the JW Marriott Hotel in Indianapolis delivering a message unlike any other this season.
Before the 2024 season’s injury-plagued 6-11 drop-off, punching a ticket to the playoffs had become common for many 49ers players, something that could be taken for granted. That falloff only made it all the sweeter when Shanahan informed this year’s edition — equally plagued by injury and resetting on the fly after a massive offseason roster overhaul — that their return to the postseason was official.
Shanahan uttering the word “playoffs” in 2025 meant more largely because he had spent the previous eight months avoiding the topic. While players knew they had clinched a spot in the playoffs, Shanahan told the Niners the ultimate goal was back in play and the room erupted.
“It was the first time he openly said to the team, ‘We can win a Super Bowl,'” fullback Kyle Juszczyk said. “That was a huge moment. … I feel like that showed how Kyle has been energized by how we have developed this season and how we have responded to everything that’s happened. Early in the season, he was like, ‘I don’t know what type of team we are.’ And once we clinched it, he’s like, ‘I know exactly what team we are.'”
This 49ers team is unfazed by adversity. It’s a team that lost 17 players via free agency, release or trade who landed elsewhere on deals worth a maximum amount of more than $340 million. A team that had more than $152 million worth of players on a reserve list of some kind — including star defensive end Nick Bosa, linebacker Fred Warner and receiver Brandon Aiyuk — and in dead salary cap space combined. That was fourth most in the league and of the teams in the top six, only the Niners had more than six wins.
In fact, the Niners managed to win 12 regular-season games, the same amount they won in 2023 with a loaded roster and came within one play of winning Super Bowl LVIII.
At the center of it all: Shanahan.
Since arriving in 2017, Shanahan has led the Niners to two Super Bowls, four NFC Championship Games and three NFC West division titles. Despite his previous success, the players who know him best believe Shanahan has been reenergized by the challenge of squeezing the most out of a team that has defied its hardships to play the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC divisional round on Saturday (8 p.m. ET, Fox). Some believe it’s his best season yet.
The recipe for Shanahan’s coaching opus this season can be found in his evolving interactions with players and day-to-day messaging, the increased efforts to delegate and empower his staff and veteran leaders, and his continued focus on X’s and O’s excellence.
It’s what made last week’s wild-card win against the No. 3 seed Philadelphia Eagles possible after losing TE George Kittle to an Achilles injury before halftime.
Shanahan is now 9-4 in the postseason, surpassing his father, Mike, in playoff wins, and one more would tie him with Bill Walsh and George Seifert for the most in franchise history. Entering Saturday, the Niners have never lost a wild-card or divisional round game in seven tries under Shanahan.
And yet, right tackle Colton McKivitz believes this year is Shanahan’s finest work.
“By far,” McKivitz said. “The coach of the year shouldn’t be a question. With what we’ve had as a team injurywise, all the roster changes and everything, everyone counted us out this year. … For us to be where we are, it speaks volumes to the coach he is.”
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AFTER THE OFFSEASON exodus, Shanahan knew that more change was needed than just the names on the roster.
It had to start with messaging.
He invited veterans — such as Kittle, Juszczyk and Warner — who had been with the team for three-plus years to his house in the spring. There, Shanahan empowered team leaders to take ownership of their roles. If this team was going to go anywhere, Shanahan needed the Super Bowl-or-bust mindset to be cast aside and all hands on deck to help the young players improve.
“I wanted to get the guys together to really explain that this team is [going to be] a little bit different,” Shanahan told ESPN in August. “It’s completely new and you guys need to understand that this team’s not just going to fall in line and be like you were.
“We have to develop these guys.”
Shanahan kiboshed open discussions about Super Bowls and playoff bids. He believed this group needed to focus on incremental improvement rather than looking at the big picture. He spent most of the offseason program and organized team activities hammering that idea home to players and coaches.
“We definitely set an intention that we can’t think that this team is something right now,” offensive coordinator Klay Kubiak said. “We have to become something … Kyle talked about it every day. I do think it gave not just him, but everybody kind of an energy of, ‘Hey, let’s just go to work. Let’s get better every day and let’s see what this group can become.'”
Shanahan then put action behind those words.
After rehiring Robert Saleh as defensive coordinator and bringing veteran coach Gus Bradley in as assistant head coach, Shanahan delegated responsibilities in different ways.
Shanahan stepped back and let Saleh take the reins of the defense after years of cycling through coordinators such as Steve Wilks, who was unfamiliar with the scheme the Niners prefer, or Nick Sorensen, who was in his first year in the role.
He also let Bradley run the team meeting that happens the night before a game.
In the past, the Saturday night meeting began around 8:30 p.m. with Shanahan showing the defense a highlight reel of 30 to 40 plays from the previous week’s game. That would take 45 minutes to an hour.
This year, Shanahan briefly steps in front of the team and then cedes the floor to Bradley, a coaching lifer with more than 20 years of experience coaching in the NFL. Bradley will then launch into a story that usually doesn’t have anything to do with football but has everything to do with life.
The stories range from tales of fishing with his son to going on a roller coaster with friends, among other seemingly normal activities. The Niners won after Bradley’s first storytelling opportunity and Shanahan hasn’t looked back since.
“We’re in and out of a team meeting now in 15-20 minutes,” Kittle said. “And I’ve never experienced that since he’s been doing the film stuff since 2019. He’s evolving and just adapting with the times, and it’s just kind of fun to see that.”
WHEN SHANAHAN DOES speak to the team, he’s dishing out more compliments than in the past — or at least trying to.
According to Shanahan, the credit for that goes to his wife, Mandy — with Kittle also claiming to have a role in it. Both have encouraged Shanahan to lean into the power of positivity. While players appreciate what Kittle calls Shanahan’s “brutal honesty,” there’s also value in encouraging words, particularly for a team with many young players.
For example, Kittle notes that in 2022, Shanahan ripped the offense apart after a 22-point win against Carolina in which it had nearly 400 yards of offense. After this season’s 16-point loss to the Los Angeles Rams, Shanahan showed clips of the team playing with high effort and intent, a reminder that the performance wasn’t as bad as the final score would indicate. Kittle says Shanahan’s balance of coaching hard and being complimentary is “something new he hasn’t done in years past.”
Rookie defensive tackle Alfred Collins, a second-round pick out of Texas, got off to a slow start after injuries in the spring and training camp. When he made a play or even just improved his technique, Shanahan made sure to call it out.
“He will commend me or say good job for doing something right but then always be like, ‘There’s more to be done and you can do this even better,'” Collins said. “I like how he just never lets us settle. … I want to be great. And you can’t be great if you just stay with what makes you good.”
Lest anyone believes Shanahan has gone soft, there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary. After San Francisco’s 34-24 win against the New York Giants on Nov. 2, Shanahan ignored Christian McCaffrey‘s 173 scrimmage yards and two touchdowns when doling out in-house player of the week awards.
“He’s always just finding ways to make sure you have that little chip on your shoulder, that little something extra that you might need that week,” McCaffrey said.
Occasionally, disagreements are more serious. Aiyuk’s refusal to take part in mandatory rehab sessions and eventual departure from the team could have been a distraction, but Shanahan repeatedly made clear that any player not in the building was not part of his focus.
One such issue spilled over to the sideline in a Week 6 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Television cameras captured Shanahan in a heated exchange with receiver Jauan Jennings late in the first half.
Coming off a frustrating training camp marked by injury and a contract stalemate and then a series of ailments accumulating in the first month and a half, Jennings grew increasingly frustrated that he wasn’t getting the ball. In turn, Shanahan was frustrated by Jennings’ frustration.
The argument continued into the locker room where Shanahan and Jennings calmed down before they could get together and squash it the next day. In 12 games since, Jennings has set a career high with eight touchdown catches and threw a touchdown pass in the wild-card win against Philadelphia.
“I probably could have done a better job of ignoring it and staying away instead of joining in and fighting with him,” Shanahan said. “It was a little immature of myself, but there were things that were bothering me.
“But, when you know someone and they know you too, you can usually get through that stuff. I think we both, after it, realized that that was so unnecessary. … I think it helped us.”
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THE NINERS ENTERED their Week 5 Thursday night meeting against the Rams without Bosa, quarterback Brock Purdy or any receivers or tight ends who caught a pass for them in 2024. They were 8.5-point underdogs playing on a short week and, despite being 3-1, reeling from a loss to Jacksonville.
In the team’s weekly W.I.T. (“What It Takes”) meeting, Shanahan described the type of grind-it-out game that would be required to beat the Rams. He then showed clips with the specific X’s and O’s on what could help pull the upset.
For the offense, that included an emphasis on spamming the middle of the field with digs and crossing routes for the receivers and a heavy dose of McCaffrey in the pass game.
“It is just that same mindset of what we’re attacking, what this team shows, and what we can do to attack it,” receiver Kendrick Bourne said. “If they’re good at this coverage, then we have to counter with something else and those are the types of things that he always shows us.”
When it was over, backup quarterback Mac Jones had thrown for 342 yards and two touchdowns. Bourne finished with a career-high 142 yards on 10 receptions with seven of those grabs for 104 yards on in-breaking routes. McCaffrey added eight receptions for 82 yards and a touchdown.
The 26-23 win was the Niners’ first with odds that big since a 2011 upset of the Eagles when they were 9.5-point underdogs.
It’s the night that Shanahan and the 49ers began believing they could take on anyone, anywhere, regardless of circumstance.
“It’s like, ‘Oh, s—,'” Juszczyk said. “Even with our backup quarterback, we can beat anybody.”
Bourne’s breakout performance and Collins’ forced fumble and recovery against the Rams were just a couple of examples of unheralded or lesser known Niners delivering in big moments.
Backup tight end Jake Tonges got the ball rolling in Kittle’s place in Week 1 with his game-winning touchdown catch, and it was a theme that carried through the wild-card win against Philadelphia when a pair of linebackers — Eric Kendricks and Garret Wallow — who joined the team around Thanksgiving started and led the team in tackles to advance to Saturday night.
Despite all the shuffling, Shanahan declined to call this season his most innovative, noting he believes he and his staff are always trying their hardest to prepare the players.
Following myriad defensive injuries — 22 players have started a game on that side of the ball this season — the 49ers leaned heavily into their offense over the final half of the year. That unit finished the regular season ranked ninth in offensive points per game (25.3), sixth in offensive efficiency and seventh in yards per game (351.4) despite having 14 players catch a pass and two quarterbacks making at least eight starts. San Francisco closed the season winning six of its final seven.
“He’s a Hall of Fame coach,” Purdy said. “Every single week he goes all in and gives everything he’s got for this team, this organization, to make sure we’re put in the right positions, and to go out and have a chance. Anytime we step out on the field with him as our playcaller, we’re always going to have a chance.”
SHANAHAN HAS NEVER been named the NFL’s Coach of the Year.
He was the runner-up to John Harbaugh (Ravens) in 2019 and Brian Daboll in 2022 (Giants), and he finished fifth in 2023. Each season had its share of challenges for Shanahan to navigate, including winning big with third-string quarterback Purdy in 2022.
The 2025 season was no different.
“If you were to tell somebody after Week 4 that we were going to be 12-5 and in the playoffs, and have one of the best records in football, people would have laughed at us,” McCaffrey said.
There are many strong candidates this year for the award, which is announced the week before the Super Bowl. New England’s Mike Vrabel, Seattle’s Mike Macdonald and Chicago’s Ben Johnson are among those at the top of the list.
But Shanahan’s focus remains on winning a Super Bowl. Though his players would like to see their coach rewarded for leading them through a year that appears to be more transformational than transitional.
“When you have to accept that your team isn’t what it used to be and you’re going to have to make those changes, that’s not easy,” McKivitz said. “I think it is his best year when it comes to building a team and then coaching it.”
