Niners Nation
There have been a lot of brilliant coaching performances in 2025. Mike Vrabel has transformed the Patriots into the AFC’s most-fearsome team, Ben Johnson is turning the Bears into a contender, and Shane Steichen has unlocked Daniel Jones on the Colts, to return them to prominence. As good as these performances have been, Kyle Shanahan has been better — and as it stands he’s being criminally underrated.
At time of writing Shanny is currently 8th in odds to win AP Coach of the Year on Fanduel, nestled between Liam Coen of the Jaguars and Sean McVay in Los Angeles. Granted, this is just the view of the betting community — which doesn’t have a bearing on final voting, but it does shine a light on the public perception of the coaches in the league this year. There appears to be a very strong bias toward building bad teams into good ones, and no appreciation for what Shanahan and the 49ers have achieved this season — which is not only play dramatically better football, but do so while navigating and mitigating more misfortune than any other team.
This hasn’t just been Shanahan’s best season as San Francisco’s coach, it’s been one of the best coaching performances of the last 20 years.
When we get down to brass tacks the 49ers are a much better football team in 2025 than they were last year. A large part of this has been the return of Robert Saleh as defensive coordinator, who is unquestionably one of the best football minds in the NFL — but it goes beyond that to the offensive side of the ball as well.
San Francisco ranks 5th in the league in passing yards and 9th in passing touchdowns (7th average) — up from 4th and 15th in 2024 (9th average). It’s not really pertinent to compare the running game due to Christian McCaffrey’s lost season, and the return of the run game has certainly helped the pass — but this improvement happened in spite of Brock Purdy’s turf toe, and being forced to turn to Mac Jones.
Naturally the running game improved as well, and in totality that has caused the 49ers to rise to score 23.6 points per game this season, marginally up from last year — but critically the team is allowing 4.9 fewer points per game this season, making them a top-10 defense, whereas last year they were 29th.
It isn’t just these rudimentary statistical improvements the team has either, but in advanced analytics as well. At RSBDM the 49ers have the 10th ranked offense in EPA/play, and the 24th ranked defense in EPA/play allowed. These represent more improvements over 2024 where the team was 11th in offense, and 26th in defense.
Finally there’s the most simple stat: Wins. If we look at the remaining schedule the 49ers should wind up at worst being 10-7 (beating the hapless Titans), and more likely finishing 12-5 with wins...
