So remember when there was all this friction between John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan? If there’s a problem in the front office, we all know what that looks like. Just look to the 2014 San Francisco 49ers and that debacle. Clearly there was something wrong.
While scanning Twitter last night, ESPN’s 49ers writer, Nick Wagoner had a funny anecdote on how well Lynch and Shanahan get along:
John Lynch said during interview process with #49ers, he put together a team using a 150-point "salary cap." He did one. Kyle Shanahan did a separate one. The teams they put together were almost exactly identical. "Maybe they hired us for that reason, I don’t know?" Lynch said.
— Nick Wagoner (@nwagoner) January 30, 2020
The salary cap thing isn’t exactly the reason why they got the job, but the fact they were identical definitely has to have a hand in why Kyle Shanahan went along with bringing Lynch in. The two are on the same page. They might have some arguments and they might have a disgruntled scouting department used to the way Trent Baalke did things given how long he was there (yes, this can be very very true), but at the end of the day, Lynch and Shanahan think on the same wave pattern.
Which is probably why they not only built a team from scratch, but also have that team in the Super Bowl three years later.