Following Super Bowl LVIII, Kyle Shanahan‘s choice to receive the ball first after winning the overtime coin toss is being closely examined.
It was always obvious who would get the ball first in overtime—the team that scored the first touchdown would win. That remains the case in the current regular-season structure, but in order to guarantee that both teams had a possession in the extra period, postseason overtime regulations were changed prior to the 2022 campaign.
After the San Francisco 49ers‘ 25-22 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, the head coach of the team justified his choice. Shanahan said,
“It’s just something we talked about,” “None of us have a ton of experience with it. But we went through all the analytics and talked to those guys. We just thought it would be better. We wanted the ball third. If both teams matched and scored, we wanted to be the ones who had the chance to go win. Got that field goal, so knew we had to hold them to at least a field goal, and if we did, then we thought it was in our hands after that.”
Shanahan speaks about the decision made beforehand
Shanahan went on to say that the choice had been made in advance of Super Bowl LVIII.
After marching all the way to the Chiefs’ 9-yard line, San Francisco had to settle for a field goal to start the extra stanza. Theoretically, Kansas City had an advantage in the postseason overtime format since they knew what they needed to do to survive on their guaranteed possession, particularly when it came to fourth-down decisions.
On fourth-and-1 from their own 42-yard line, the Chiefs were confronted with a similar scenario. They devised a brilliant play that saw Patrick Mahomes gain 8 yards unimpeded. Nine plays later, Mahomes and company scored the game-winning touchdown.
With this setback, San Francisco’s Super Bowl losing skid now stands at three, with two of those losses occurring under Shanahan’s seven-year run. The 49ers had leads in the fourth quarter of both of those losses, but the most recent one had many wondering what-might-have-been after his overtime call. He said,
“It was two real good teams. It went back and forth throughout the whole game,” “Both teams played their asses off. They got it done.” “We’ll take some time. We’ll get over this,” “And come back next year ready to go.”
