One season into Kyle Shanahan’s tenure in San Francisco, it certainly looked like he had a long road ahead of him to relevance. His team was 6-10 while the Falcons were 10-6 and headed to the playoffs. During a disappointing 2019 for the Falcons, the 49ers were even worse, clocking in at 4-12 thanks to a raft of injuries, including Jimmy Garoppolo’s.
At that time, at least, the Dan Quinn-Kyle Shanahan gulf was still quite wide. Quinn was still well over .500 in his career and Shanny was two years in with not much to show for it, and the hope among those of us here in Atlanta wasn’t so much that he’d fail with the 49ers as the Falcons would not really miss him because of a Quinn-led rebound in 2019.