Back in 2001, Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Mora delivered his infamous “Playoffs?” rant after losing a game to the 49ers.

Ironically, San Francisco’s 2025 motto effectively has been not to talk about the NFL playoffs. So it was only appropriate that rule was lifted on Sunday afternoon — when the 49ers clinched their spot in the postseason — a day before facing the Colts.

After Monday’s 48-27 win at Lucas Oil Stadium, coach Kyle Shanahan discussed his team meeting the day before, when he finally was willing to discuss the playoffs with his team and congratulated them for the achievement.

“I told them all year I don’t want to talk about that, but last night we got in so I was able to talk about that,” Shanahan told reporters. “And when you know you’re in the playoffs, then you shift your goals next, and that’s trying to make the playoffs the best situation we can possibly do.

“So, [we would] love to try to play a home game at Levi’s, and we knew the only way to do that was to win tonight versus the Colts. We got that done, and now we got to look to do that versus Chicago.”

Shanahan went on to elaborate more about his message to the 49ers in that meeting, who improved to 11-4 with their Week 16 victory.

“I just told the guys how proud of them I was,” he said. “I remember starting this offseason, bringing the guys over to my house back in OTAs. All the vets — guys who have been here for three or four years — there’s all guys who every time we’ve gone to OTAs, it’s been all about trying to get to a Super Bowl, trying to win a Super Bowl.

“I wanted to make sure that we didn’t really talk that way this year. We needed to focus on just trying to be the best team we could be, and we’ll see what happens. That’s kind of been our motto all year, and I was just so proud that I actually now, last night, could congratulate them and actually talk about the playoffs because they earned that, they got in there and now it’s time to position ourselves to try to do something special in that.”

Shanahan didn’t say that his mindset was based off Mora’s now-iconic rant, as fun as that would have been. Instead, it’s clear the coach was intentional about preparing his team to overcome adversity on a week-to-week basis, which is exactly what the 49ers have had to do this season, given the slew of injuries, off-the-field issues and more they’ve faced.

Many of San Francisco’s players got plenty of playoff experience early in their career; Nick Bosa, for example, made at least the NFC Championship game in four of his first five NFL seasons. So, as Shanahan explained, players like Bosa grew to think the NFL just is all about competing for Super Bowls. But when a season doesn’t go right, as was the case for San Francisco in 2024, it’s particularly crushing.

“I wanted guys to just know like, you can’t always look at it that way,” Shanahan continued. “If you do — a couple bad things happen, a couple injuries happen — and you can get very deflated. I wanted guys to just focus on being the best they could, and when you’ve spent your whole time in the league — guys like Brock [Purdy] — that every year you’re in there, you’re going to the NFC Championship or something. I had to kind of tell them the reality: That’s not always the case, and get that out of your mind. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it, but we need to focus on just being the best team we can be and earning the right to talk that way.”

Fortunately, the 49ers now have taken a significant step towards earning that right.

Purdy also shared his perspective on Shanahan’s speech to the team.

“[He] basically told us, obviously congrats on making it to the playoffs, and it’s not something we can just overlook,” Purdy said in his postgame presser. “Like it’s pretty cool to do that. And so [we] felt good about that, but obviously the next challenge is we just win one game at a time and try to be the best that we can going into the playoffs.

“And obviously, we know what’s at stake with the first seed and all that, but we can’t get our minds wrapped around just that. We have to go handle business and play a really good team in Chicago next week coming to our place. So we have to be locked in. We have to watch this film. We have to get better. But it was cool hearing Coach sort of congratulate us, but also there’s a lot of work to be done.”

George Kittle, meanwhile, revealed that the 49ers’ mindset this season is nothing new to him.

“You start every season. … You want to go to the Super Bowl. You want to win it. That’s your goal,” Kittle told reporters. “While I appreciate Kyle saying that, hey, our mindset’s a little bit different this year, I mean, me personally, I’ve always been like, one week at a time. It is what it is. We’ve had great teams where we started the year 5-0, lost three games in a row, and then we bounce back and we go off on a roll there. So, it’s always one game at a time for me. … As long as our offense keeps chugging along, that’s all I really care about.”

Needless to say, the San Francisco offense certainly kept chugging along on Monday night.

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