49ers position grades, analysis from sloppy Week 7 loss vs. Colts

49ers Coaching: F

Kyle Shanahan isn’t going to get fired. But he surely deserves a heavy, heavy load of the criticism. Both for San Francisco’s collective struggles over this four-game losing streak and for all that went wrong in Week 7 against Indianapolis.

Aside from getting away from what was working early, the strong outside run game with Elijah Mitchell, Shanahan has to be called for two specific problems.

One, Shanahan’s faulty challenge of what he thought was a Colts fumble despite it being recovered by Indianapolis after the ball crossed the first-down marker. It resulted in a burned timeout, which was surprising. And even though Shanahan later blamed the headsets for not working correctly in the rain, there was no reason for the challenge.

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Beyond that, and perhaps even more troubling, is the fact the 49ers were flagged seven times for a whopping 122 yards.

Sure, a lot of those yards came on defense on pass-interference calls, and defensive coordinator DeMeco Ryans has to bear some blame there, too.

Ultimately, however, Shanahan has to be held accountable for the lack of preparation. Especially after the two-week break with the bye.

If Shanahan was responsible for getting his team up for this contest, he failed.