Kyle's Strong Case for Coach of the Year
No one did more with less in 2025.
The San Francisco 49ers made waves in the National Football League this season, doubling their win total from last season and controlling their destiny up to the final week of the season. While this feat is impressive enough to make a case to be in the running for Coach of the Year, Shanahan has done it even with so many of their star players missing games.
When the 2025 NFL season kicked off, Shanahan’s odds at the coveted award sat at +2800. He has surged his way into the conversation after rattling off six straight wins. The 49ers, as a team, per Yahoo Sports, sat at 20-1 odds to hoist the Lombardi Trophy, and that number has since skyrocketed to fourth in the whole league with +800. Typical winners are coaches whose teams make drastic jumps in the Super Bowl odds. Typically, signals of a great season.
Unfortunately, San Francisco’s Week 18 loss to Seattle all but killed his legit chances a winning the award, falling from +185 to +4000. A bit of a drastic fall for being so close previously, but that’s the way award season goes. Still, that shouldn’t diminish a legitimate case.
When looking at Shanahan’s body of work this season, it’s clear his name deserves serious consideration. The 49ers sit in the NFC’s 6th seed, tied for the second-best record in the league, and have clinched a playoff berth.
The 49ers are a young team that was supposed to rely heavily on their veteran leadership this season. Their team captains for the 2025 season have missed over 35 games combined this year. This does not include the other slew of injuries role players have missed time with, such as Bryce Huff, Jauan Jennings, and Malik Mustapha. The team sits in the top ten of weeks missed due to injury by players in the league. This does not even mention the caliber of players missing, like Fred Warner, Nick Bosa, Brock Purdy, and George Kittle.
While injuries have been a plague on the 49ers’ year, Shanahan also masterfully navigated the Brandon Aiyuk saga. The news of their top-paid wide receiver quitting on the team hit right in a critical stretch for the team. The 49ers did not skip a beat with all the outside noise, and that is a huge credit to the head coach.
Shanahan has had several seasons in which an argument could be made that he could have been Coach of the Year. Most notably, the 2019 season, when he turned a four-win team into a 13-3 conference championship team, or in 2022, when he found a way to produce and make a run to the NFC Championship game with three different quarterbacks.
We’ll see how far the 49ers can make it this year, but in years past a team this injury only limped to the top of the draft. With all things considered, Kyle Shanahan’s coaching prowess in 2025 is one of the more impressive accomplishments any coach has had this year. Even if he doesn’t win the award, he’s proved to be one of the league’s elite and very best.