Not a good look.

At Kyle Shanahan’s end-of-season press conference a few days ago, he proudly announced that he would be promoting Klay Kubiak from passing game specialist to offensive coordinator. Turns out, Shanahan violated NFL rules by making this announcement, because teams can’t promote coaches internally to coordinator positions without first conducting an official set of interviews with multiple candidates.

Oops.

What a silly rule to break, especially considering that Kubiak’ls promotion is ceremonial. He won’t call play next season — Kyle Shanahan will still do that. Kubiak primarily will get a new title and a raise. So now the 49ers have to conduct a bunch of phony interviews before they give out a phony promotion to Kubiak. What a charade.

You’d think Shanahan would know this rule, because he has been in the NFL since 2008, plus his dad was an NFL coach for decades. If anyone should know the league’s minutiae, it’s Shanahan. But he’s the one who seemingly didn’t know the overtime rules in the Super Bowl — how else do you explain him winning the coin toss and electing to give Kansas City the final possession of the game?

It’s unclear if the league will punish the 49ers for this rule violation. Last year, the 49ers forfeited a fifth-round pick due to a cleric error they committed in 2020. So they’ve been overlooking critical details for years and these oversights are beginning to cost them.

Lock in, Kyle.