On the surface, it seems surprising that San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan will tie Hall of Famer Bill Walsh for the most games coached in franchise history on Sunday with 166.
However, the reality is that Walsh turned 48 years old during his first season (1979) and only coached for 10 seasons, compiling an overall record of 102-63-1 (61.7 percent).
Coincidentally, Shanahan was born on Dec. 14 during Walsh’s first season with the 49ers. That means Shanahan turned 39 during his first season in 2017. Now in his 10th season by the bay, the team’s 2-0 start has his record at 93-72 (56.4 percent).
There are many other similarities. Each took over a 49ers team that was 2-14 the season before they were hired and then struggled in the first
two seasons before turning things around in Year 3 with identical 13-3 records.
In the first two under Walsh, the 49ers were 2-14 and 6-10, while Shanahan was 6-10 and 4-12.
Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur journeyed back in his mind almost a decade when asked Wednesday why the 49ers have enjoyed such consistency with Shanahan as the head coach. After all, LaFleur was with the 49ers during Shanahan’s first four seasons, serving as passing game coordinator/wide receivers coach in 2017 and 2018 and then solely the passing game cooridnator in 2019 and 2020.
“It’s a standard that’s just been established there since 2017,” LaFleur said. “I've got as much respect for Kyle as anyone in life, let alone just in football and the way he goes about his business. But again, it’s just the standard. When you walk in there, it’s all ball. There’s no BS within that organization. It took time. I hate to even bring it back because it sucked in real time, but we started 0-9 our first year. Won one, got to 1-9 and then went to 1-10. Then won five in a row to end it and finished 6-10 that first year. It was almost like throwing a parade that we won six games and the next year we go 4-12.
“It took some time from a standard perspective of getting the right people on the bus. Once that thing flipped in ‘19, (they got) enough leaders in place and a standard in place that they could, for the most part since ‘19, get through some of the injury issues they’ve had.”
During that nine-game losing streak in 2017, two were to the Cardinals: 18-15 in overtime at Arizona in Week 4 and 20-10 at home in Week 9.
Shanahan was told about the milestone 166th game prior to his media availability Wednesday and when asked what it means to him to be talked about in the same breath as Walsh, he said, “Bill Walsh is the man, so I didn't look at it as really being compared to Bill Walsh, but thank you for doing that. I don't even know if it's a record or anything, but the thing I just saw before I came in and when it said 166 games, it just made me realize how old I've gotten because that's a lot of games.”
Finally, he told a great anecdote after noting he’d never met Walsh and was then asked whether he was able to watch any of his meetings or tapes.
“Yeah, when I first got here. They had everything recorded,” he said. “That was something that my dad (Mike) told me about when he came in when he replaced (Mike) Holmgren (as offensive coordinator in 1992), how cool it was for him because he lived in the Marriott, which is where we stay before games. For two months without the family and everything, he just watched every Bill Walsh install for like the previous 10 years.
“Then when the players came in, he was able to talk to them about their offense like he already knew it. And they have all that stuff. It's totally different now, but that's stuff that I entertained myself with when I first got here. It's pretty cool.”
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This article originally appeared on Cards Wire: Kyle Shanahan channels 49ers Hall of Famer Bill Walsh
