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Kyle Shanahan recently said Steve Wilks simply "ended up not being the right fit" for the San Francisco 49ers. His comments came shortly after the defensive coordinator was fired just days after they lost Super Bowl 58 against the Kansas City Chiefs. The 49ers' defense played excellent for the majority of the game, but a game-tying and game-winning drive by the Chiefs may have contributed to Wilks' release.
Former player and current NFL analyst Emmanuel Acho expressed his disagreement with the 49ers' decision to get rid of Wilks. In fact, most of his frustration with the firing is directly aimed at Shanahan. He discussed this in a recent post from his X account.
Acho explained:
"Kyle Shanahan got me heated. Shanahan, you wasted a season... Blitzing is what Steve Wilks does. If you didn't want Wilks to blitz, then why'd you hire him? Then the Super Bowl, biggest stage, everybody watching in the biggest moment. You call a timeout to question Steve Wilks. You never believed in the dude in the first place, now you're gonna fire him.
"Shanahan, you got to know what you're doing before you do it. You can't just be hiring dudes all willy nilly. When you got All-Pros all over the defense, you're wasting their careers. Hire somebody that you believe in, and go get the job done."
It seems as though Acho, as well as many others around the NFL, are annoyed that Shanahan is basically making Wilks the scapegoat for the loss. In reality, the 49ers' offensive play calling, failure to score more points, and getting away from the rushing attack likely had more to do with the loss than the defense did. That falls on Shanahan, who calls the offensive plays, and has an unfortunate history of coming up short in the Big Game.
Kyle Shanahan Super Bowl record
Kyle Shanahan has now helped the San Francisco 49ers reach the Super Bowl twice in his seven years as their head coach. He has unfortunately lost both of those games to the Kansas City Chiefs after holding a lead in the fourth quarter of both games.
While he wasn't the head coach, he was the offensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons when the New England Patriots overcame a 28-3 deficit to defeat them. In all three Super Bowls that he has been a part of, he has blown a fourth-quarter lead as the offensive play-caller.
