The 49ers took the ball to start the overtime period in Sunday’s epic Super Bowl LVIII, giving the Chiefs a chance to win when they settled for a 27-yard Jake Moody field goal on their opening drive. Of course, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs seized that opportunity with a 13-play, 75-yard drive capped by a Mahomes-to-Mecole Hardman pass to win the championship.
Even if the 49ers had scored a touchdown, the Chiefs would have had a chance to answer — a new playoff overtime rule enacted this season.
Coach Kyle Shanahan was adamant after the game that he and his staff had analyzed statistics and decided that receiving the kick was the right move, though of course none of them had coached before under the rule.
“We went through all the analytics and talked with those guys, and we decided it would be better and that we wanted the ball third,” he said postgame. “If both teams matched and scored, we wanted to be the team with the chance to go and win. We got that field goal, so we knew we had to hold them to at least a field goal and if we did, we felt it was in our hands after that.”
At least some 49ers’ players, though, did not know about the tweak in rules, which previously stipulated that an opening-drive field goal in overtime would allow a rebuttal, but a touchdown would end the game.
“I didn’t even know about the new overtime rules, so it was a surprise to me. I didn’t even really know what was going on in terms of that,” defensive end and captain Arik Armstead said. “They put it on the scoreboard, so everyone was like ‘Oh, even if they score, we still get a chance to do something.’”
When asked if the coaching staff had approached him about the rule, Armstead said he was not aware of it.
Kyle Juzsczyk also said he was not aware of the rule change.
“I assume you just want the ball to score a touchdown and win,” he told ESPN. “I guess that’s not the case. I don’t totally know the strategy there. We hadn’t talked about it, no.”
Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones said his team had talked about the change for two weeks, expecting to kick off and go on defense first, not unlike the prevailing strategy in college football overtime, when each team gets a chance from the opponents’ 25-yard line. He said the Chiefs planned to go for 2 if the teams matched touchdowns.
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But Chiefs coach Andy Reid seemed to suggest there was not a clear consensus among coaches on the right strategy with the new rules:
“There’s two ways: You kick it off or you receive it,” Reid said. “I’m not sure there’s a right answer, necessarily. Ours ended up being the right one. That’s what we felt was the right thing to do.”
Shanahan said after the game that the defense’s stamina had nothing to do with the call, and that he never considered going for a fourth-down conversion with 4 yards to go from the Kansas City 9-yard line rather than sending Moody out to kick the field goal.
“Even if we score there, they could still go down and match it,” he said. “So no there, there was no thought there.”
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