49ers head coach denies impact of ‘Super Bowl hangover’ in rocky start

Chris

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49ers head coach denies impact of Super Bowl hangover in rocky start

It's easy to figure out why the San Francisco 49ers have stumbled through the first 10 weeks of the NFL season. It is more difficult to determine exactly Why behind these reasons.

After all, the 49ers were just a few games away from a Super Bowl win in February, and now they're 5-5 overall, last in the NFC West and No. 10 overall in the NFC.

One of the commonly cited explanations for the team's struggles this season is the dreaded “Super Bowl hangover” the team is experiencing after failing to reach the league's highest level. Head coach Kyle Shanahan doesn’t buy that blanket explanation.

In a conference call with reporters Monday following the team's loss to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 11, Shanahan instead pointed to manageable on-field issues the team had in its most recent loss.

I don't think there's an answer to a trip or a Super Bowl hangover. I think it's about what exactly happens in this game. The week before was almost the same game. I think we lost 13 to 10 or something in the third period. I think they came back and got the equalizer and we went down and won in the last game. So I don't think we had a killer instinct in that game and not in this game. They took a 13-10 lead in the fourth quarter. We went on a 14-play drive, scored a touchdown and overcame a lot of negatives on that drive and still took a 17-13 lead. Our defense held them to a four-and-one, I think, with three and a half minutes left. So I saw the killer instinct on both rides. And then we have to run out the time on offense and complete three plays to make it in the second and eleventh rounds. We missed a throw and a catch, which I think would have put us in the red zone and allowed us to lose more time, maybe even the time, but we didn't make it and then they put us on the caught last drive. So we have to play better in the last two trips. And that's what usually matters in football. If you don't want it to get to that point beforehand, you'll have to play fairly flawlessly to score a few more points before the end. But that's why most games in this league come to an end and we did that against Tampa, but we didn't do that this week.

This has some advantages. There have been several times this season where better execution on one or two plays in a game would have turned the result around and the 49ers would have been around 8-2 or 7-3 after ten games.

However, they were plagued by various problems over the course of 11 weeks, resulting in five defeats. The spate of problems could be explained by the mental and physical fatigue that typically characterizes a “Super Bowl hangover.”

Maybe Shanahan is right and the team will just start playing more effectively down the stretch and make it to the postseason. Until they do that, however, we'll have to look to the first ten games for explanations.

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