Kyle Shanahan is on stage, calmly sitting before an audience of diehard, rowdy fans. Their incumbent coach – the 49ers’ first since Jim Harbaugh — is asked about this season’s goal. One fan after another shouts: “Super Bowl!”
“Without me saying it, and everyone else said it, you know what our goal is every year,” Shanahan responds.
That was two months ago, when the 49ers held a raucous State-of-the-Franchise event at downtown San Jose’s California Theater. A 6-10 season wasn’t cause for glee as much as the 5-0 finish.
Enough optimism abounds that, from last summer to this summer, they’ve gone from 200-to-1 Super Bowl long shots to 20-to-1 candidates.