Kyle Shanahan is entering his eighth season as the 49ers head coach. His record is 64-51, he has lost two Super Bowls and he recently signed a contract extension that will keep him around for quite some time. That's how grateful Jed York is to be relevant.
George Seifert coached the 49ers for eight seasons. His record was 98-30, he won two Super Bowls and got fired. That's how high Eddie DeBartolo Jr.'s standards were.
If DeBartolo Jr. still were the owner, would he have fired Shanahan by now?
To find out, I asked my dad, Lowell Cohn, who covered the 49ers from 1979 to 2017. Here's what he said.
LC: "Seifert's last season with the 49ers he was 12-4. But in the divisional round, he got beat two years in a row by Green Bay and Mike Holmgren, their guy. So Eddie Debartolo Jr., who was the owner, who had the highest standards, fired Seifert. Eddie's attitude was that he wasn't just in it to be in the playoffs. He expected to win the Super Bowl. Not wanted -- expected. And Seifert couldn't do it anymore. So thank you, but you're out. Eddie was very emotional, and sometimes when he was younger he could have maybe acted better. But he was decisive. In this case, firing George was a mistake, because he followed him up with Steve Mariucci, who's a very nice man but does not have the football acumen of Bill Walsh or George or Jim Harbaugh. It was a bad hire, but it was not necessarily a bad fire. And the point is that Eddie didn't mess around.
"So where are we going with this? Eddie would have already fired Kyle. He fired Seifert, a two-time Super Bowl Champion, and he would accept this? This guy who twice got them in the Super Bowl and gave up leads both times and didn't know the rules? He would have fired Shanahan. And what's more, I would have supported it. I'm not sure I supported firing Seifert, but this I would have supported. Thank you so much for your service, you got us to the highest level, now we need someone who will bring us into the Promised Land. You can't come."
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