San Francisco 49ers owner/CEO Jed York has already shown that he is willing to torch a regime when the season collapses. Back in 2016, he fired head coach Chip Kelly and general manager Trent Baalke after a 2-14 finish, and said the franchise needed a “new direction.” That history is why the conversation around Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch, the ones who replaced Kelly and Baalke in 2017, keeps drifting back to the same place: are they on the hot seat?

To their credit, since taking over in 2017, they have pulled the franchise out of the Jim Tomsula-Chip Kelly spiral, built one of the NFC’s most stable rosters, and reached two Super Bowls. But the same resume also carries the weight of unfinished business: multiple deep playoff runs, no Lombardi Trophy, and a roster expensive enough that patience may no longer be unlimited. Which is why….

“I feel like at a certain point the Yorks have to say, ‘it’s been nice, but we really can’t get over the hump.’ And I don’t know what’s going to happen this year, but I think there’s a lot of pressure on these guys,” Sports Illustrated’s Grant Cohn theorized on the 49ers Collective podcast. “I think if they make it to the NFC Championship game, they’ll get extensions. But if they don’t, it’ll be like, ‘man, it’s been a few years, you’re not getting better.”

Shanahan’s resume is already heavy: two Super Bowl appearances, a 12-5 finish last season, and five playoff trips without a title since 2017. But even with a consistent postseason appearance, they still haven’t won a ring. Is that enough to shut the door on Shanahan and Lynch?

On the podcast, Alex Boone, the former Niners guard, pushed back on the idea that York is ready to clean house. Instead, Boone called the Niners, Shanahan, and Lynch’s “baby,” and pointed to how often this front office kept the 49ers in check last season when their quarterback room saw a major injury concern.

That is the part Boone was leaning on: not just that Shanahan and Lynch have won, but that the operation did not completely cave when the most important player on the roster missed a major chunk of the season. For a franchise trying to judge whether its current leadership has gone stale, that distinction matters.

NFL sportscaster Larry Krueger pointed out that even successful coaches do not get forever. His larger point was not that Shanahan and Lynch have failed in the way the previous regime did, but that NFL owners eventually judge whether a long-running setup is still moving toward a championship or simply circling the same result.

Even Andy Reid, one of the most reputed coaches in the history of the sport, had to walk away from the Philadelphia Eagles after a 13-year run ended with consecutive postseason exits. Krueger then brought the conversation back to San Francisco’s own scars from the years before Shanahan and Lynch arrived.

Those lost years were very real. When Jed York fired Jim Harbaugh after his fourth season with the team, the Niners upgraded defensive line coach Jim Tomsula to head coach for 2015. Tomsula had previously served as the interim head coach in 2010, when York fired Mike Singletary. However, Tomsula went 5-11 in 2015 and was fired hours after the season ended. Chip Kelly, up next, had a 13-game losing streak and finished the season 2-14.

York’s statement after firing Kelly and Baalke was not framed as a small adjustment, either. He said the team’s performance had not met his expectations or the fans’ expectations, and that the 49ers had not progressed the way they expected over the course of the season. Baalke, who had been with the organization since 2005, also admitted at the time that “sometimes you need to reset the culture.” That is the history sitting underneath any Shanahan-Lynch hot-seat debate, even if the current regime’s résumé is far stronger.

Now, on paper, Jed York has already committed to this regime. The Athletic’s Matt Barrows had made the case back in March that the Niners would sign both their leaders to extensions, just not right away.

“I don’t think Shanahan is eyeing free agency,” Barrows wrote. “I believe he has three years remaining on his contract and that general manager John Lynch has two. My guess is that the 49ers brass will check in with Lynch at some point this offseason. They probably wouldn’t approach Shanahan until next year.”

Lynch and Shanahan rebuilt the roster and repaired the brand. But York’s history says one clean season slipping below his standards can push him for a hard reset once again. The locker room will be feeling that tension this season. Whether Kyle Shanahan can still command it is a separate question, but it’s one his players have started answering on his behalf.

Kyle Shanahan’s progress with the Niners

How the locker room views Shanahan complicates the clean-break logic. All-Pro fullback Kyle Juszczyk told NBC Sports Bay Area’s Laura Britt at the Dwight Clark Legacy Series event in San Jose that Shanahan is not the same coach he was when he arrived back in 2017.

“Over 10 years, honestly, I could say he’s probably developed in every phase and has improved,” Juszczyk said. “I think the one that really stands out is just his comfortability standing in front of the team and addressing the team and speaking to a group of men and doing it confidently.”

Juszczyk has a long view of that growth because he and Shanahan arrived in San Francisco the same year. Juszczyk was 25 when he signed with the 49ers, while Shanahan was 37 and coming off his run as the Atlanta Falcons’ offensive coordinator. That role, as Juszczyk noted, did not demand the same kind of full-team presence Shanahan had to develop as a head coach.

A coach who owns the room and keeps adapting makes it harder to argue that he’s actually on a hot seat. His player, Juszczyk, has already seen how his coach approaches everything.

“If it’s the first day of training camp, he’ll go back and watch last year’s meeting of the first day of training camp to see what he said,” Juszczyk added. “And I think part of that is not to just keep saying the same thing, and to keep it fresh. That’s another thing that he’s so great at doing, is adapting to the roster that he does have.”

Juszczyk also made the leadership point more directly, saying Shanahan now “commands the room” and knows exactly what he is doing in front of the team. That is important because the argument against Shanahan is not that he lost the locker room. It is that a long-tenured coach can still be respected internally while ownership starts asking whether the same structure can finally deliver the last step.

There is no denying that Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch have turned the San Francisco 49ers into fierce competitors. But right now, they still sit in the gap between ‘necessary’ and ‘expendable.’ One flat season that misses Cohn’s NFC title-game bar would give York cover to decide the Shanahan-Lynch era has eaked.