Shanahan about to learn just how dangerous dangerous really is

Kyle Shanahan’s first job as the latest conservator of what used to be a prime coaching job is to learn a valuable lesson about offensive orthodoxy.
 
Namely, the best orthodoxy is to abandon orthodoxy when circumstances require.
 
Shanahan was announced as the new coach of the San Francisco 49ers this afternoon, one day after he aided and abetted the undoing of the world champion Atlanta Falcons by “doing what we’ve done all year.”
 
Not that that should be his M.O. coming into the new job, but as the last thing he did, the Falcons’ blown 25-point lead in the Super Bowl is going to linger awhile in the hearts of minds of skeptical 49er fans. Non-skeptical ones will credit him for everything up until the fateful second half, but that’s not the audience he has to win over.
 
Shanahan was named as Chip Kelly’s successor, and goes from one of the game’s most talented offenses to one of its least talented. He has a clear philosophy about up-tempo football that worked for 18 games and three quarters, and his reputation was made in large part by his work with this Falcon team with its surfeit of wide receivers, running backs and an elite quarterback.
 
None of which he has in San Francisco.
 
But that is where his new running mate, general manager John Lynch, comes in. The 49ers need a full engine rebuild, and with parts in short supply, the job will likely take three years, conservatively speaking.
 
In that time, we will see if Shanahan can help build a roster, coach it forward, play the politics required of a head coach in the National Football League, and be willing to trust his gut instead of his play sheet at the right moments.
 
That last part is what ruined the Falcons’ dream season -- his play-calling combined with head coach Dan Quinn’s clock and tactical management of the final 20 minutes of the game. After all, Quinn was the one who could have overruled Shanahan’s play-calling choices at any point, and as head coach he should have.
 
This matters only because Shanahan is now the overruler, and it means assembling and coherently melding his own staff while reconstructing the roster with Lynch and convincing Jed York and Paraag Marathe that the six years they promised him and Lynch will match the level of patience they are willing to expend upon them both.
 
That is the great question as Shanahan begins this new career leap. Coaching is far more complicated a process than play-calling or player relations, and though Shanahan surely knows that intellectually having watched it as an assistant and as a son, knowing it viscerally is what separates success and failure at the NFL level -– especially given these prices.
 
He will need to know when to push, when to pull and when to be pushed and pulled, because coaching is a political act that requires a depth of understanding of one’s surroundings matched by very few jobs. His preparation given all this is better than most, but he is now in charge of a couple of hundred people when you count players, coaches, ancillary staff, miscellaneous front office types and whomever else York thinks he needs to be aware of, because it takes rings and a force of will to win the right to compartmentalize the world as Bill Belichick does.
 
And finally, Shanahan needs to do all this while rebuilding the operation from the rebar and floor slab up. This is the biggest job he has ever undertaken, and one of the biggest anyone has taken on in recent NFL memory. That he does so with a rookie general manager and a front office generously painted as disarrayed makes it all the more daunting.
 
But we can say that he knew the job was dangerous when he took it. He is about to learn just how dangerous dangerous really is, and how invigorating dangerous can truly be.