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?

“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.

“Do you realize that this team has been competitive?” Boone asked. “Let me put it to you this way: the fact that they made the playoffs last year and their $250 million quarterback wasn’t even playing.”

Franchise quarterback Brock Purdy got sidelined with a turf toe injury right at the season opener against the Seattle Seahawks. They’d just signed him to a $265 million, five-year extension that offseason. Backup quarterback Mac Jones managed a 5-3 record in his absence, and the Niners finished 12-5 after Purdy came back in Week 11.

NFL Sportscaster Larry Krueger pointed out that even coaches with championship rings do not get forever. He recalled Mike Tomlin, who stepped down from the Pittsburgh Steelers’ head coach position after 19 winning seasons. John Harbaugh was the other stark case study, fired by the Baltimore Ravens after 18 seasons with the team.

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. Krurger then looked at the 49ers’ own history.

“Chip Kelly years, Tomsula years. They lost credibility in the eyes of the league, and John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan have restored that,” Krueger said. “They haven’t won at all, but I think it’s more about how close do they get if they start getting further and further away from the target? I think they could be lopped off in the next two or three years. If they start missing the playoffs, if they start going 8 and 9, if they have years like that, then all of a sudden I think Jed’s going to be like, ‘You know what? You don’t get forever.’”

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.

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 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.”

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.”

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.