For Kyle Shanahan and the San Francisco 49ers it comes to the Super Bowl revenge against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. To prepare, he had to do something he doesn’t like at all.

Munich / San Francisco – Kyle Shanahan doesn’t like to think back to the last time his San Francisco 49ers faced the Kansas City Chiefs. In the Super Bowl in February 2020, they were leading by ten points with less than seven minutes to go before Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs turned the game around.

The two teams will meet again on Sunday.

What thoughts arise in Shanahan’s mind when he thinks of the last encounter with the Chiefs? “That we lost,” answers the head coach. The pain still runs deep. So much so that he would have preferred not to watch the game at all. Now, however, he was forced to do so in view of the match preparation.

“I hadn’t watched it for a long time until the last two days. I don’t like watching the game. But that’s not what this week was about. I had to watch it for analytical reasons because the game is our shared history. “

Setting aside the Super Bowl, though, Shanahan still thinks back fondly to his former team from the 2019 season. “I love thinking about our team that year. I felt like we had the best team in football that year. But in the end, we were just the second best team because we didn’t make it at the end. “

Great respect to Patrick Mahomes

The task doesn’t get any easier. That’s because the 49ers face what is likely to be an even better version of Patrick Mahomes on Sunday. “He’s been through a lot more different situations since then and has more experience,” Shanahan said. “He was unbelievable then and he’s still unbelievable now.”

One difference from then, though, is that they no longer have to cover Tyreek Hill, who left for the Miami Dolphins. That wouldn’t necessarily make the job any easier, though, according to Shanahan: “They lost what I consider the fastest guy on the planet. But they still have a lot of players all over the field, and the quarterback distributes the balls well and is still just as effective.”

Kansas City has won four of its first six games of the season. San Francisco stands at a record of three wins and three losses.