Kyle Shanahan prepared the 49ers well for their Super Bowl 58 matchup with the Chiefs, as evidenced by the play on the field. San Francisco performed well on both sides of the ball throughout the contest and had plenty of chances to seal a win and avenge its Super Bowl 54 loss to Kansas City.
Yet there was one area in which the Chiefs were better prepared than the 49ers: overtime rules.
The Chiefs and the 49ers went to overtime after Kansas City’s Harrison Butker hit a game-tying field goal with just three seconds left in regulation. At that point, both teams prepared and strategized for the extra session.
Kansas City, though, had an advantage over San Francisco in their planning, as several 49ers players weren’t aware of the NFL’s playoff overtime rules, they admitted after the 25-22 loss to the Chiefs.
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49ers players didn’t know NFL playoff overtime rules
Veteran defensive tackle Arik Armstead wasn’t aware of the differences between the regular-season rules and its postseason rules for overtime, he told reporters after the game.
“I didn’t even know about the new playoff overtime rules,” veteran defensive tackle Arik Armstead said. “It was a surprise to me. I didn’t even really know what was going on in terms of that. They put it on the scoreboard and everyone was like, ‘Even if you score, they get a chance still.'”
The new NFL playoff overtime rules were a surprise to Armstead 😅 pic.twitter.com/NZMaC6cVYA
— 49ers on NBCS (@NBCS49ers) February 12, 2024
The NFL modified its playoff overtime rules ahead of the 2022 NFL season. The change came after the Bills lost to the Chiefs, 42-36, in the divisional round after failing to see the ball in overtime.
Under the new rules, both teams are guaranteed a possession, even if the team to receive the ball to open the period scores a touchdown. Previously, a touchdown on the opening overtime possession would end the game.
That said, a first-possession touchdown still ends the game in the regular season. So, some — like 11-year veteran Kyle Juszczyk — just assumed those rules were still in place in the postseason.
“You know what, I didn’t even realize that playoff rules were different in overtime so I assumed you just want the ball to score a touchdown and win,” Juszczyk said after the game. “I guess that’s not the case, I don’t totally know the strategy.”
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Should the 49ers have received the ball in overtime?
Naturally, many NFL fans questioned Shanahan’s strategy of receiving the ball first in overtime under the new rules.
Wouldn’t it be advantageous to go second and therefore to know exactly what the team needed to accomplish on their final drive to better fight for a win? That tends to be the conventional wisdom at the college level, where both teams are guaranteed a possession.
In reality, the decision to kick or receive is practically a coin toss, per ESPN’s Brian Burke. He detailed after the NFL’s rule change that the team receiving the ball won 50.19% or 50.29% percent of the time, depending on whether the team getting the ball second goes for a two-point conversion after a touchdown.
In reality, that slight edge toward receiving the ball is insignificant. As such, it was all a matter of preference, and Shanahan believed that getting the ball first gave San Francisco its best chance to win.
“It’s just something we talked about with, you know none of us had a ton of experience with it, but we went through all the analytics and talked to those guys and we decided it would be better — we wanted the ball third,” Shanahan said of the 49ers’ coin-toss decision. “If both teams matched and scored, we wanted to be the ones to have a chance to go win. We got that field goal so we knew we had to hold them to at least a field goal and if we did then we thought it was in our hands after that.”
Shanahan’s strategy has some analytical merit to it, though it ignored one key possibility. The 49ers weren’t guaranteed to get the ball back even if the teams traded matching touchdowns.
Why? As star defensive lineman Chris Jones explained, the Chiefs were always going to go for a two-point conversion if they had a chance to win. That’s why Kansas City wanted the ball second — a fact that Reid stressed to his players as he hammered home the NFL’s new overtime rules in the leadup to the Super Bowl.
“We talked through this for two weeks,” Jones told The Ringer of the Chiefs’ overtime strategy. “How we was going to give the ball to the opponent; if they scored, we was going for two at the end of the game. We rehearsed it.”
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So the Chiefs were certainly better prepared strategically for overtime. That they all bought into the plan and understood it may have helped them to secure the win.
Even so, it doesn’t seem like Shanahan’s choice or the 49ers players’ lack of knowledge about the overtime rules was behind their defeat. San Francisco simply couldn’t contain the league’s best quarterback when he was given a chance to mount a game-winning drive.
And because of that, Mahomes is now a three-time Super Bowl champion.
