San Francisco 49ers’ head coach Kyle Shanahan may have fallen short of a Super Bowl ring again, but he delivered a championship-caliber performance in an entirely different arena. On February 8th, NBC Sports’ NFL executive producer Fred Gaudelli tried his luck and made a recruitment call to bring in Shanahan as an analyst for the Super Bowl pregame show, and it worked.

Shanahan was in the booth on Sunday, and he exceeded all expectations, making it seem like he had found his career move after retirement.

“Before Sunday, I assumed Shanahan would follow the same path as his dad, who didn’t enter a TV booth after his coaching career,” San Francisco Chronicle’s Eric Branch wrote. “In 2021, Mike Shanahan told the Denver Post that broadcasting wasn’t “his deal.” It could be the same deal for his son, who might have viewed last Sunday as a one-off. Shanahan didn’t have to travel and was part of a pregame crew that included Chris Simms, his close friend and college teammate.”

Shanahan has always been a little guarded as a coach, yet he was still the kind of guy who joked with reporters after practice. That part of him never really went away, helping him in his new one-day role with NBC. With his contract running through 2027 with the 49ers, this little cameo might’ve served as an audition for a future broadcasting role.

Shanahan still hasn’t won a Super Bowl, but this time, he showed up on Super Bowl Sunday in a different way – clean-shaven, no hat, and in a suit & tie. During his brief run as an analyst, he was genuinely fun to watch. He gave real answers, not the guarded stuff you usually hear. More importantly, he actually explained his thinking, which is rare in a league full of tight-lipped coaches.

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He didn’t hide behind clichés or packaged sound bites. He just talked, and that’s why he worked so well on NBC, too. He stayed authentic, never forcing a “TV version” of himself, and looked relaxed in front of millions. Even with his reputation as an offensive mastermind, he chose humor over ego, poking fun at himself instead of leaning on his résumé.

While Shanahan’s post-coaching future is uncertain, this is definitely not the last recruitment call or job offer that he has received from a network producer.

His CV already includes a range of offensive roles before he became a head coach, so he’s likely to get similar coaching offers after his San Francisco tenure, but with the NBC cameo added to his CV, he has opened even more avenues for himself if he ever decides to make a switch. He certainly looked like someone who could handle it.

Kyle Shanahan turns heads as NBC analyst

Every fan who tuned in to the pregame show loved seeing Kyle Shanahan’s in-depth analysis of the matchup, occasional jokes, and his overall persona in front of the camera. The first thing he talked about was his own bad luck when it came to winning the Super Bowl, and he paralleled his story to his dad’s.

“I’ve got my three losses out of the way,” Shanahan said.

For context, Mike Shanahan also started 0-3 in Super Bowl appearances before eventually winning three, so Kyle is hoping that he can replicate his father’s career trajectory. The humor continued when the conversation shifted to the matchup with the Seattle Seahawks, the league’s top-ranked defense, and Shanahan reminded viewers that he isn’t the right person to analyze them.

“I know you guys want my expert opinion, but I haven’t scored a touchdown on these guys the last two times we played them,” Shanahan said. “So I don’t know how good that is.”

His own team managed just nine total points across two meetings against Mike Macdonald’s unit. After the jokes were made, Shanahan got right into analysis, and as Branch noted, the 49ers HC consistently talked about details that casual viewers might miss, starting off with the importance of Drake Maye’s body language.

“When you watch the silent tape, you can see a guy’s character on film the way he plays,” Shanahan said. “He plays in a humble way, yet confident.”

His analysis got more and more tactical, as he dove into Patriots‘ aggressive safeties and Seattle OC Klint Kubiak’s tendency to dial up deep shots for Sam Darnold, and predicted that temptation would be part of the equation in the Super Bowl.

“Klint and Sam — they will be very tempted,” Shanahan said. “I know what they love to do. … If you do that a lot and you hit, yeah, then you can kill somebody. But chasing that all day can get you off your rhythm — get you away from the run game.”

As the segment moved along, Shanahan seemed increasingly at ease as he explained why Seattle’s two-high safety structure limits explosive plays, walked through the arc of their Super Bowl run, and even predicted that Maye would struggle under certain looks, as he did. Overall, it was a thoughtful, yet at times, fun conversation, and the fans would surely love to see more.