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No matter how many times he tries to justify it and in how many different ways, Kyle Shanahan’s decision to take the ball to begin overtime of Super Bowl 58 will always be disputed.
As we know now, some of the San Francisco 49ers players didn’t even know the overtime rules. While the Kansas City Chiefs already had a plan in place for how they’d handle the situation.
Now a mic’d up sideline video from the moment shows the confusion on the San Francisco sideline as well as Chiefs players celebrating the 49ers’ decision to take the ball.
— Over Cleveland Alexander (@OvaCLEAlexander) February 14, 2024
Inside The NFL Video Shows Stunned Chiefs Players After Super Bowl 58 OT Coin Toss
The video comes from Inside the NFL via NFL Films and begins with Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes discussing that they would kick the ball if given the options.
It then cuts to Shanahan telling Fred Warner before the coin toss that they wanted the ball.
Warner wins the toss and opts to receive.
The video then shows a seemingly shocked Mahomes running to the sideline saying “they want it. They want the ball. They want it.”
Travis Kelce then says “we want them to have the ball. They want it? They can have it.”
That’s when things get interesting.
The video cuts back to the Niners side and shows fullback Kyle Juszczyk saying “hey, even if we score a touchdown they still get the ball. I didn’t know that.”
Clearly it sounds like Juszczyk wouldn’t have taken the ball if it were his decision given the rules.
Shanahan said after the game that he knew this. But it’s still startling to see that 49ers players were not alerted to this fact.
“If we won the toss, we were gonna kick off to them. We got what we wanted,” a Chiefs assistant then says to his players before the video cuts out.
Hindsight is 20/20. But even at the time, most fans felt it was strange for San Francisco to take the ball. And the entire Inside the NFL crew agreed. Though they said the blame lies with more people than just Shanahan.
It’s still another bad look for a coach that has routinely reached big games only to falter once there.