Super Bowl: Kyle Shanahan and Christian McCaffrey looking to add to legacy of 49ers, family

LAS VEGAS — Kyle Shanahan was asked this past week about the legacy he is leaving on the game, with a chance to extend it on Sunday. He cringed at the word.

“When I think of ‘legacy,’ I think of my dad,” he said of former Super Bowl-winning head coach Mike Shanahan. “This is the last game of the year and these are the ones that count, so yeah, you understand that, you’re aware of that, but that’s stuff that you don’t really have time to spend thinking about.”

While trying to duck the question, Shanahan may have inadvertently hit on the exact point of what is at stake for him and the 49ers when they face Kansas City in Super Bowl LVIII.

It’s not the legacy they are trying to create.

It’s the one they are tasked with continuing.

For Shanahan, it is the one blazed by his father. Kyle was a ballboy on many of the teams his father coached, including the one he won as an offensive coordinator with the 49ers in the 1994 season.

“Being a coach’s son, I was very fortunate to just be around it so much, and especially at the NFL level,” Shanahan said. “My dad went to the NFL when I was 4 years old, so being around it almost my whole life, you don’t realize how much it helps you until you get in it. You realize a lot of the stuff you’ve been around makes it a little easier.”

But his own trophy case has been more difficult to fill. In two trips to the Super Bowl, one as the 49ers’ head coach four years ago and one as the Falcons’ offensive coordinator three years before that, he’s come away with nothing but heartbreak after having late leads each time.

A win Sunday would make the Shanahans the first father-son duo to coach teams to Super Bowl wins, but t

hat isn’t the only legacy the 49ers are trying to continue.

Christian McCaffrey’s father, Ed McCaffrey, was a wide receiver who won a ring with that 49ers team for which Mike Shanahan was the coordinator. The McCaffreys are attempting to become the second father-son duo to win Super Bowls with the same organization after Steve and Zak DeOssie did it with the Giants.

“It’s surreal, man,” Christian McCaffrey said. “Even though I didn’t grow up in San Francisco, it feels like home to me. All the names that are in our building are the same names that I remember my dad would say, and it’s just the next generation of them. It is really cool to be able to go to work with all of those guys, knowing that we’re cut from the same cloth.”

Legacy also stretches beyond family. This is an organization that won five titles between 1982 and 1995 but has been to two Super Bowls since and lost both. This is a franchise that has produced Joe Montana and Steve Young and now turns to Brock Purdy, taken with the final selection in the 2022 draft, to pick up the heavy quarterback torch.

“What they’ve done for this organization, the history, for me as a quarterback, there’s obviously some big shoes to fill,” Purdy said of his predecessors. “I’m not going to compare myself to them or anything, but they’ve set the standard for winning in this organization. You look at the 49er logo, you think of success and Super Bowls because of those guys. And when you’re in their presence, you’re in the presence of greatness. They got the job done, so it definitely makes you think ‘let’s step it up and live up to the standard that they set.’ ”

Both Hall of Famers offered private advice to Purdy.

“Just briefly talking to Joe, it’s been just pretty simple, just in terms of ‘you’ve got a good team around you,’ ” Purdy said of his chat with Montana.

He said he was told to “go through your reads and what Kyle is calling and trust in Kyle.”

As for Young, Purdy said they talked about “mindsets.”

“With all the stuff going around on the outside, being able to sink back into what you believe and understand who you are and what your purpose is,” Purdy said.

He said Young spoke to the entire team, too.

“When you have an opportunity like this, you’ve got to take it,” Purdy said of that message. “You can’t let it slide. There’s a lot of players in the NFL that don’t get opportunities to go to the Super Bowl and win it. So he was like, ‘You got to do what you can as a team when you have this opportunity to take it.’ ”

If the 49ers can do that, they’ll be able to do more than just continue the traditions and standards they have been born (or drafted or signed or traded) into. They’ll have created their own.

“When it’s all said and done,” Kyle Shanahan said, “then I guess people can talk about legacy.”

Maybe he will, too.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.