San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan has done an amazing job this season. Improbably, he has guided his team to another appearance in the playoffs, and if the Niners win their next two games, they will have the No. 1 seed in the NFC.
However, he has one issue that he needs to clean up before the playoffs: his challenges.
On Monday night against the Indianapolis Colts, Shanahan made two bad challenge mistakes. He challenged what was clearly a catch by Colts wide receiver Michael Pittman and lost a challenge and a timeout as a result of that poor decision.
Then, he may have been a little gun shy later in the game when tight end Jake Tonges made a phenomenal toe-drag catch in the end zone on a dart from quarterback Brock Purdy that looked like a touchdown but was ruled incomplete.
Shanahan did not challenge it, and it ended up not mattering as the Niners scored on the very next play. But these challenge mistakes could come back to bite San Francisco going forward.
In last week's game against the Tennessee Titans, Shanahan inexplicably challenged a kickoff by the Titans in which it looked like the returner may have been outside of the end zone when he caught the ball while it was ruled as a touchback. So Shanahan, and the people telling him whether to challenge or not upstairs, threw the flag thinking he may have actually been down at the 1-yard line or it potentially could have been a safety.
It ended up not mattering as the 49ers beat the Titans handily and did the same to the Colts, but the margin for error is going to be much smaller going forward.
Every game is a playoff game going forward, and tiny mistakes like that could wind up ending San Francisco's season.
Shanahan has been average, historically, when it comes to challenges. Coming into the season, he had roughly a 55-percent success rate, which is not bad among active coaches. But this season, he has a record of 1-3 on challenges in terms of ones that were overturned versus upheld.
This may seem like a relatively minor point, but this 49ers team is likely not going to steamroll opponents the way it did in the 2019 season on the way to the Super Bowl. This time, the games are probably going to be tight shootouts, and losing a timeout by wasting a challenge could be the difference between winning and losing.
Shanahan deserves all the credit in the world for the job he has done this season, but he and whoever gives him the go-ahead to challenge things during the game need to clean things up going forward.