The 49ers kept rolling last weekend, winning for the fourth time in five games. This one was in trilling fashion, walking it off in Cincinnati with Brandon Aiyuk’s diving, overtime touchdown.
It was a game of wild swings for the 49ers. Their 20-6 fourth quarter lead fizzled away thanks to two Bengals touchdowns. Then, retribution was spoiled when Robbie Gould missed what would have been the game winning kick. Cincinnati was the first to strike in overtime with a field goal, putting pressure on the 49ers to score of lose the game. Ultimately SF delivered.
All’s well that ends well, but for head coach Kyle Shanahan it was a rollercoaster of emotions.
“It’s just like constant, 20 second, strong emotions,” Shanahan said on 107.7 The Bone. “They are extremely strong, but you can’t get attached to anything because you’ve got to keep going. It was the whole fourth quarter. I felt like we had the chance to put them away on like three different series in a row, and we kept missing it. That’s why we gave them a chance to get back in that game.
“The whole 4th quarter drives I felt that way, and then all of the sudden they go and tie it up. No matter how bad you felt you’ve got to stay aggressive and flip your mindset to positive, like ‘alright, let’s go. We’ve missed this three times but we’ve got to win it right now.’ You don’t want to be all discouraged before that happens, you want to get it right back. Then when you do it, it’s like alright we got it done, then you miss the field goal and get very frustrated and down for about 20 seconds, and it’s like alright screw it let’s win this in overtime.”
“So it’s just up and down the whole time, but you can’t let anything last long until the game is over. When the game is over you deal with what the consequences are.”
Shanahan wouldn’t even let himself celebrate when Aiyuk scored the game-winning TD, afraid that the refs might not get the call right.
“Even when you can see it on the scoreboard and you can see that it is a touchdown, I still don’t celebrate because you never know what’s going to happen. You never know in the eyes of the beholder and you never know if they are going to overturn something. I’ve been burned too many times.”
Listen to the full interview below.