Kyle Shanahan didn't think much about how long he'd been the San Francisco 49ers' head coach until someone put the number in front of him. On Sunday against the Arizona Cardinals, Shanahan will coach his 166th game with the organization, tying Bill Walsh for the most games coached in franchise history.

Ten years into his tenure, though, Shanahan's biggest reflection isn't about the number of games. It's about how much he's changed. "It doesn't until I start to really think about it," Shanahan told Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area when asked if 10 years feels like a long time. "And yeah, it is long."


One of the biggest changes has been learning what deserves his attention and what doesn't. Early in his career, Shanahan said he felt compelled to fix everything immediately. It didn't matter what time of year it was. If something wasn't right, he wanted to address it.

That approach eventually became unsustainable. "You can't, like, I can't freak out about everything," Shanahan said. "I gotta pick my spots." The coach said he has learned to delegate more and trust the people around him to handle things that don't require his direct involvement.

"I used to be it didn't matter if it was March and if one thing was off, I'd lose my mind and obsess over it and feel like I had to fix it that second," Shanahan said. "And as I go through this more and more, you realize like, man, my energy might not be as needed there as it feels like."

That's something Shanahan considers part of maturing as a head coach. "I've had to delegate those things and learn how to do that, which I guess is maturing," he added.

It's an interesting admission from a coach who has spent nearly a decade carrying the responsibility of running one of the NFL's most scrutinized organizations. And Shanahan doesn't believe the solution has been to reinvent himself every year. If anything, he says the opposite.


His message to the players remains tied to what is happening on the football field. He doesn't feel pressure to come up with some elaborate motivational speech simply because he's been saying similar things for years. "I try to have my messaging go with something that I'm showing," Shanahan said. Shanahan believes players respond better when the message connects directly to what they're seeing on the field and what they are preparing to face.

"The film is what's going to inspire people," he said.

That philosophy has also helped him keep the job fresh after 10 years. Football itself keeps changing. Players change. Opponents change. Problems change. What Shanahan asks his team to fix from one week to the next isn't always the same. "Football is a new thing every time you look at it," he added.

That may be part of why Shanahan doesn't seem that interested in treating his 10-year milestone as some major personal accomplishment. He acknowledged that 166 games is a lot. He joked that he initially thought the number represented his entire 22-year coaching career.

But the milestone also puts him alongside Walsh, the Hall of Fame coach whose legacy is intertwined with everything the 49ers became in the 1980s. Shanahan knows what that means, but his focus remains on the next game.


After 10 years, 166 games, and plenty of lessons along the way, Shanahan's biggest change may be that he has learned not everything needs to be solved today. Some things can wait. Some things can be delegated. And when Sunday arrives, there's only one thing that matters: the next game.

Watch the full interview below:



Written By:

Marc Adams


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