Don't let anyone tell you that San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is looking past anything. He has repeatedly said that he knows how difficult it is to reach the Super Bowl. But make no mistake, his goal this season, and every season going forward, is to get there again and not let it slip through his fingertips.
"February and March, I wasn't in the best state," Shanahan told Chris Simms on the Chris Simms Unbuttoned podcast of the Super Bowl LIV loss. "I mean, no one died. I still have my health, I still have my family, but man, does it hurt when you know how close you were to something and how big of a deal that is, and how easily you could have done it."
Shanahan believes the defeat will only make him better. It drives him to want to get over that hump finally.
"Holy s--t, I want to get back there and get that done," he added. "And that's why I never let it go. I'll never let it go. But I can deal with it, I can live with it, and I can go do it again. I'm not scared to lose. I'll go do it again and give everything I have."
Shanahan has been meeting with his players virtually this offseason. He hasn't had an opportunity to meet with them face-to-face and go over February's heartbreaking Super Bowl defeat. Film from the game has come up during the virtual meetings, but nothing extensive. The coach is eager to go over it in greater detail and show his team how close it was to winning a championship.
"That was my plan in OTAs when I could get everyone together, to do something like that," Shanahan said. "I'm going to do something similar to that here when we get everyone back ... It is a new year, but you want to address it because you don't want guys to run from it at all. And you want them hungry over it, and see like, 'Guys, it's not rocket science. This is why we lost. This is why we could have won. It's these plays, alright?' There's never one play. There's a bunch. But it adds up.
"However you want the mood to be, you can dictate that. Guys will be like, 'Oh my God, we can easily do this again.' Or you can just crush guys and make them feel horrible. I don't want to do that. I want guys to see how easily we could have done it, and also remember how hard it was to get there because that's also what people don't realize."
Shanahan understands he still has a good team, capable of making another championship run. He knows his players have been working hard individually this offseason.
The problem is that the 49ers haven't had the opportunity to work as a team this offseason.
"So when our players get here, yeah, I'm going to show them some of the Super Bowl," Shanahan shared. "They know we have one goal — to get there. But they have to know we haven't done s--t yet, and we have to put in the work as a team."