SAN FRANCISCO — Watching the San Francisco 49ers this season, Chris Simms had the same thought go through his head as plenty of fans.
The difference, as a longtime friend of coach Kyle Shanahan, is that the NBC Sports analyst wasn’t scared to tell those close to him what he was seeing.
“I would joke with his family, I’d be like, ‘The 49ers aren’t even good. You guys aren’t even good,’ ” Simms said Tuesday at the network’s Super Bowl week media availability. “I’d say that to his mom. And his wife. And they’d laugh.”
The injuries piled up. All-Pros and role players alike landed on injured reserve. The quarterback missed time with turf toe. And the 49ers kept on winning. In his ninth year with San Francisco, Shanahan’s squad wasn’t eliminated from NFC West contention until the final week of the season.
“I was going on (television) all year going, ‘They’re not going to win the NFC West,” Simms said. “I just kept going, ‘Damn, he’s gonna crap all over me and this team’s gonna win the NFC West.’ This is unbelievable.”
The toll eventually caught up to San Francisco and the 49ers’ season came to an end in a 41-6 loss to the Seahawks in the divisional round. They won’t be competing for a Super Bowl this week, but after an improbable 12-5 finish and Shanahan’s fifth postseason appearance, he could still factor into this week’s festivities.
The NFL will award its Coach of the Year on Thursday night during its annual NFL honors ceremony at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
Shanahan has never the won the award, despite being tied for the league’s second-longest tenured head coach. Simms, for his part, said if he was starting an organization, Shanahan would be his pick to lead it “and that’s the way Kyle’s viewed throughout football.”
Still, he may not be the leading contender, considering that Mike Vrabel and Mike McDonald led the Patriots and Seahawks from losing records to the Super Bowl, while Ben Johnson and Liam Cohen helped turn around long-struggling franchises in Chicago and Jacksonville.
Jason Garrett, the former Dallas Cowboys coach, said Shanahan’s coaching was “as good a job as he’s done” since taking over the Niners in 2017. But was it worthy of Coach of the Year?
“You could certainly make the argument,” said Garrett, now an analyst for NBC Sports. “A lot of injuries on both sides of the ball, for him to continue to have that team be competitive week in and week out, that’s a fantastic job. … But, you know, Vrabel, Ben Johnson, Liam Cohen, I think all those guys have done a fantastic job.”
Simms, whose relationship with Shanahan dates back to their days as teammates at the University of Texas, admitted he was biased.
“What he did this year, come on, it’s crazy. He’s one of the two or three best head coaches in football. But Coach of the Year is really hard this year,” Simms said, drawing a comparison to last year’s MVP race between Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Josh Allen. “(Shanahan) every bit deserves to be up in that conversation, but I mean, I can certainly understand (Vrabel, McDonald, et. al) being above that.”
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