Kyle Shanahan is a brilliant play caller and play designer, but he like everyone else isn’t perfect as a head coach. His game management skills are weak, and his personnel decisions are open to debate as well.

That’s where Trey Lance comes in. Shanahan and the 49ers gave up the farm to trade up to draft him with three first round picks. Lance is a physical specimen, but he’s from a small college program and didn’t have a ton of reps in college.

Now we’ll see how this experiment works out. In the season opener against the Bears, Lance made some nice throws, but he was very inconsistent. Also, if you watch all of Lance’s snaps from the game, several troubling trends emerge.

First, the 49ers are basically running a college-style offense for Lance with a heavy dose of designed runs. Also, when Lance drops back and has to move off his first read, he quickly panics and tries to run the ball. This isn’t too bad for fantasy football, but in real football this leads to big problems.

Which leads to the other concern. Lance is a big guy, but he’s taking a beating. His risk of injury is very high with this playing style, and the 49ers don’t seem to care. That tells you they’ve already downgraded Lance’s value within the organization.

With Jimmy Garappolo on the roster as the backup QB, Shanahan has had to lobby team veterans to give Lance a chance to succeed. Let’s see how much patience those veterans have before we hear calls for Jimmy G.

The Dallas Cowboy find ways to lose. It’s been a staple of this organization for a while, and Mike McCarthy has kept this tradition going. His clock management has been a disaster all year long, and now his incompetence has helped to lose a playoff game. The quarterback draw with Dak Prescott at the end of the game was inexcusable.

Meanwhile, Kyle Shanahan did his best to keep the Cowboys in the game, dialing up some strange play calls when all he had to do was run out the clock with a lead. Jimmy Garappolo contributed with a brutal interception that gave the Cowboys life. Then Shanahan was afraid to go for it on fourth and inches, giving Dallas another shot.

This game was very entertaining and featured two good teams, but the fourth quarter was a complete mess. Dak Prescott didn’t live up to his enormous contract, and Jimmy G threw one of his signature interceptions to stain what otherwise was a solid performance.

Jerry Jones has put together a decent roster in Dallas, and some of their coaching moves have panned out like the Dan Quinn hire. But Jones needs to take a hard look at his team and probably move on from Mike McCarthy.

The Atlanta Falcons led the Super Bowl 28-3. Late in the fourth quarter, they had an 8-point lead with minutes left and the ball just beyond the New England 20-yard line. A field goal seals the game and a Super Bowl title, and yet on second down Kyle Shanahan called a pass play and Matt Ryan took a devastating sack.

Of course New England deserves credit for the comeback, and they’ll get plenty as the New England dynasty and the Tom Brady legacy will be discussed ad nauseum. But the story of this game is the Atlanta collapse.

Several years ago I attended the Gatorade High School Athlete of the Year Awards and RGIII was there as one of the presenters. He was riding high as a high draft pick after the Redskins had mortgaged their future by trading a boatload of draft picks. Meanwhile, as a Browns fan, I had to hear about how the Browns blew it by not offering even more for the right to draft him.

Several years later things have changed quite a bit. The Redskins are a mess and RGIII has been benched by Jay Gruden. Meanwhile, Kyle Shanahan is the offensive coordinator for the Browns who are 7-4 with Brian Hoyer as the starter.

What happened?

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Donovan McNabb seems thrilled to be free of the Shanahans in Washington.

“Some coaches say ‘Hey, it’s my way or no way,’ ” McNabb said via the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “You become robotic. That’s when you pull away from your style of play and the way of things that got you successful. If things don’t go as well as you’d like them to, you find out what the mistake was, you correct it and you go right back and get it done.”

Mike Shanahan is a control freak. His son Kyle Shanahan, the offensive coordinator in Washington, seems to be even worse. They personify a disturbing trend where coaches try to do too much, and they don’t let their players play. I think if you make football too scripted, you lose the ability to let your players improvise.

I admire teams like the Steelers that put players like Big Ben in a position where he can improvise and make great plays. Of course all of this is a balancing act, but the Shanahans seems to represent the extreme.

I have no idea how McNabb will do in Minnesota. He has some great weapons, but he’s also near the end of the line. That said, he’s a veteran, and it makes sense to let him play the game.