When he left a broadcasting career three years ago for his first job in an N.F.L. front office, with the San Francisco 49ers, John Lynch sought to model his partnership with Coach Kyle Shanahan on what he considered the paragon of general manager-coach alliances: Ozzie Newsome and John Harbaugh’s Super Bowl-winning work in Baltimore.
And in his first two months with Shanahan, Lynch thought he had done well. That was until he found himself discussing management styles with Harbaugh at the league’s annual meetings in March 2017. Lynch mentioned on the rare occasions when he and Shanahan had disagreed, they sidestepped arguments by just moving on to the next topic.
Challenging him, Harbaugh told Lynch that approach was the easy way out. If Lynch believed strongly in something, Harbaugh argued, he was responsible for making Shanahan believe it, too.
“You learn little things like that from people and gather experiences over time,” Lynch said in an interview at the 49ers’ headquarters in Santa Clara, Calif., before the 2018 season.
“We haven’t done anything yet,” he said then, “but we like the way we’re going.”
The 49ers’ success this season — a 13-3 record, a No. 1 seed in the playoffs and a berth in the N.F.C. championship game on Sunday against Green Bay at Levi’s Stadium — reflects a continuation, not the culmination, of the process that began in 2017. That was when Shanahan and Lynch received six-year contracts and were tasked with restoring to glory a franchise that had missed the playoffs for six consecutive seasons, one doomed by a toxic trinity of internal discord, poor morale and regrettable personnel decisions.
Lynch and Shanahan inherited a team that went 7-25 in its previous two seasons, a team that came to be known for bad football, bad coaching and its uncomfortable place in the center of a contentious national conversation about social justice sparked by the activism of the quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the tweets of President Trump.
Lynch and Shanahan hit on some decisions, missed on some others and went 10-22 in their first two seasons. But these two men with deep Bay Area connections — Lynch played at Stanford, and Shanahan is a former 49ers ball boy whose father, Mike, once served as the team’s offensive coordinator — did not stray from the plan they had forged, in both talent and spirit.
To learn each other’s preferences as they set about overhauling the 49ers’ roster, they studied film together. They deliberated how they would resolve arguments. They developed a vision statement, in consultation with a Stanford professor, that aligned their philosophies and would guide their decision-making.
What they have engendered is a harmonious locker room, governed by an altruistic culture embodied by cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon’s request to play special teams after he was benched in last week’s victory over Minnesota, and a roster crafted to Lynch and Shanahan’s specifications: Of the 22 players who started against the Vikings, only five predate this administration.
Carmen Policy, a high-ranking executive on the 49ers’ last four Super Bowl-winning teams, said Lynch and Shanahan had reconnected the team to its halcyon days. He likened the franchise to a beloved relative who had become sick, one that still evoked warm feelings even as people figured it was best to keep their distance.
“And all of a sudden, these great doctors and scientists came up with these various cures and medications, and that relative bounces out of the hospital and he’s right back to where you remember him,” Policy said. “And in some ways, because you haven’t experienced it in a while, he’s even more fun than he used to be.”
In fostering a more positive environment, Shanahan and Lynch valued candor and authenticity. Players felt as comfortable addressing them by their first names as they did discussing their contract status. Coming from Seattle, where he enjoyed playing for another impressive general manager-coach tandem in John Schneider and Pete Carroll, linebacker Brock Coyle said he appreciated how Lynch would speak to the team on occasion.
“It was almost like having two head coaches,” Coyle, one of the first free agents Lynch signed in 2017, said in a telephone interview. Lynch’s playing pedigree — nine Pro Bowls and a Super Bowl title as a hard-hitting safety — gave him authority. “When you have a coach who you respect and a G.M. who you respect, and they respect you and what you’re doing on the field, that breeds confidence, that breeds camaraderie, that breeds trust.”
In assembling their current team, Shanahan and Lynch took risks that rivaled the audacity shown by 49ers ownership when, after firing coaches in three consecutive years, it installed two unproven men in critical leadership positions and allowed them to learn on the job.
In a pass-oriented league, the 49ers handed the richest contract for a fullback in league history to Kyle Juszczyk, so San Francisco could run the ball — or evince the impression it was running — regardless of what the defense presented. Then they loaded up on speedy backs — Raheem Mostert, Matt Breida, Tevin Coleman — whom Shanahan could maximize in open space.
Undeterred by serious injuries, they signed linebacker Kwon Alexander, who was coming off a torn knee ligament, and the All-Pro cornerback Richard Sherman, who had ruptured an Achilles’ tendon. Lynch summoned his own experiences as a 30-something defensive star to court Sherman, saying how, in 2004, some teams wanted Lynch for his leadership but never mentioned his performance.
“I said, ‘Richard, first of all, we want Richard Sherman the player — we need a corner, and we need a guy that would come in here and play at a high level,’” Lynch said. “That spoke to him.”
Sherman’s arrival, before the 2018 season, fit a pattern established early. Under previous regimes, San Francisco had welcomed players with perceived character issues. “Those years when we were in the playoffs, you’d wake up on Monday, and say, ‘O.K., who’s being escorted out of the back room of the sheriff’s office?’” Policy said, referencing the 49ers’ three consecutive trips to the conference championship, including the Super Bowl in 2013, under Jim Harbaugh.
But on this risk-reward point Shanahan would not cave: the 49ers, in free agency, would pursue only players whose moral fiber and work ethic matched their talent. He wanted overachievers. Drifting from that principle, he said in a 2018 interview, would damage his credibility among his players. (Their only high-profile mistake, linebacker Reuben Foster, who had been one of San Francisco’s first-round picks in Shanahan and Lynch’s first draft together, was cut midway through his second season after a series of arrests. Shanahan said it was a matter of “trust.”)
As the losses stacked in that first season, nine in a row to begin Shanahan’s coaching career, five straight by 3 points or fewer, he and Lynch served as each other’s psychologist. Some days, Lynch said, he would have to encourage Shanahan before he spoke to the team. “Because you’re pulling your hair out,” Lynch said. “We could go 0-and-16, you know? You try not to have those thoughts, but if you’re human you do.”
Lynch had another thought, though, the day after the 49ers lost to Philadelphia to fall to 0-8. The New England Patriots had called and offered Jimmy Garoppolo, the presumed successor to Tom Brady, for a second-round pick. To establish the vibe they wanted, Lynch, at first, remade the roster by seeking players Shanahan or his coaches knew.
But when Garoppolo became available, Lynch pounced. He and Shanahan agreed that the trade amounted to an audition, not a commitment; it would not deter them from exploring other options. Then Garoppolo showed up. Lynch and Shanahan loved his mechanics and aptitude and capacity for improvement. What they loved even more was the way Garoppolo’s teammates gravitated toward him.
As the 49ers won their final five games, all Garoppolo starts, Lynch was reminded of a tidbit Carroll, the Seahawks coach, once told him: Teams that play younger players might suffer early, but that faith will be rewarded late. The optimism that the 49ers carried into 2018 was shattered when Garoppolo damaged a knee ligament in Week 3, wrecking their season, but their 4-12 record allowed them to fortify a defensive line already loaded with four former first-round picks by spending this year’s, the No. 2 selection over all, on the edge-rushing dynamo Nick Bosa.
“Sometimes we almost worried: Does that mean we needed some worse guys, because we are not winning?” Shanahan told reporters this week. “But we stuck with it. We brought in a few guys who thought the same way as our other guys and some difference makers with the pass rush and some guys on offense, too.”
In this jubilant season, Burke Robinson, a longtime management consultant, has thought often of Lynch, whom he taught in an Introduction to Decision Making course at Stanford in 2014, when the general manager was trying to plot the next phase of his career. About 10 days before the 2017 draft, Robinson helped Shanahan, Lynch and the 49ers executives Adam Peters and Martin Mayhew put into words an organizational strategy. It values attributes like “contagious competitiveness” and “accountability to other players and themselves.”
But toward the end of that meeting, Robinson said, he met alone with Shanahan and Lynch. He asked them how they planned to handle potential conflicts on draft night, in a crowded room — if, say, Lynch wanted a defensive player while Shanahan favored offense. John Harbaugh’s advice was already being implemented. They resolved to express their opinions in private, with vigor, before returning to announce their decision.
One win from the Super Bowl, the plan appears to be working perfectly.
Source: Football - nytimes.com
