While Andy Reid‘s Kansas City Chiefs are getting nothing but praise, Kyle Shanahan is facing the consequences of losing yet another Super Bowl at the helm of the San Francisco 49ers.
Many of 44-year-old’s decisions on Sunday are being questioned now that the Niners lost, especially his call to receive the ball first in overtime. Reid, however, defended his colleague’s choice, explaining there haven’t been enough Super Bowls with the new overtime rules to judge Shanahan’s call.
“That’s the value of [statistical analysis coordinator] Mike Frazier. He does a great job with that. There’s two way you can go with it. You can either kick it off or you can receive it. I’m not sure there’s a right answer necessarily,” Reid said, via Pro Football Talk.
This was the first Super Bowl that went to overtime with the revised rules that guarantees both teams will have a chance of possession. After winning the toss, Shanahan ordered the Niners to receive the ball. It didn’t go to plan, as they had to settle with a field goal before Patrick Mahomes led an incredible drive to find Mecole Hardman for the game-winning touchdown.
“Ours ended up being the right one. That easily could have gone the other way,” Reid explained. “That’s what we felt was the right thing to do. I’m never going to question Kyle because he’s brilliant. That was just something that we chose through out studies. We felt that was important.”
Kyle Shanahan explains why he chose to receive first
Speaking to reporters after the game, Shanahan explained to the media he wanted to anticipate to a potential sudden death scenario. With the 49ers receiving first, they would also get back the ball in the event the score was still tied after the Chiefs‘ possession.
“It’s just something we talked about,” Shanahan said, via NFL.com. “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 has a fair point. The problem was that San Francisco failed to get the job done both in offense and defense. The Chiefs were happy to kick the ball first, as Mahomes later revealed their idea was to look for a touchdown followed by a two-point attempt before letting the Niners get the ball back. But it wasn’t necessary, as the Chiefs only needed to get into the end zone to get the upper hand.