The roots of the NFL’s most influential modern-day coaching tree are planted in the broom closet. That’s where Gary Kubiak spent five days of his second career poring over piles of scratched VHS tapes in a windowless room in the back of the San Francisco 49ers practice facility.
“I didn’t see the light of day for a week,” he says now.
In the year It was the spring of 1994, and after a nine-year run as one of the league’s most anonymous players — that’s life when you’re John Elway’s backup — Kubiak signed on as the 49ers’ new quarterbacks coach. He assumed the tapes were full of practice shots of Joe Montana and Steve Young, or at least, Bill Walsh calling his famous West Coast offense in one of his three Super Bowl victories. It’s wrong.
As he hit the pitch, he saw coaches standing in front of the table.
It was a ritual for 49ers assistants under offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan, Kubiak’s new boss: In that vacuum closet, they watched three different coaches teach the same scheme. First, Walsh was a pioneer; Next up was Mike Holmgren, the former 49ers OC now leading the Packers; Finally, it was Shanahan himself, who came to San Francisco two years ago, after two stops as a Broncos assistant and an unsuccessful run as the Raiders head coach.
“Before you can coach, you have to learn how to teach,” Shanahan told Kubiak.
Gary Kubiak led the Houston Texans to back-to-back AFC South titles in 2011 and 2012. (Harry How/Getty Images)
Shanahan’s offense and Shanahan’s so-called coaching tree became a good cause. It was Mike Shanahan who helped Elway exorcise his Super Bowl demons in Denver, and ten years later in Washington he developed a young staff that produced some of today’s most creative offensive minds: his son Kyle, now the 49ers coach, Rams coach Sean McVay, Packers coach Matt LaFleur and the Chargers Matt LaFleur and the Chargers OC the Mike2 2025, among others.
Gary Kubiak’s footprint was easily overlooked. For years he was a brat for both a star quarterback and a star coach, never mind the attention that followed. He followed Shanahan to Denver as offensive coordinator after the 49ers won the Super Bowl in January 1995, and along with offensive lineman Alex Gibbs, the trio reimagined the modern running game. The wide zone was born. Two topics followed.
When Shanahan told his trusted No. 2 that he was going to start calling about head coaching interviews, Kubiak let it go. “The only thing I can think about is working my ass off at this job,” he said.
In the year In 2006, his chance came in Houston, and in eight seasons, Kubiak led the franchise to its first two playoff victories. He combined Walsh’s West Coast principles with Holgren’s play-action tendencies and Shanahan’s wide zone and put his own stamp on it, calling plays for a unit that finished in the Top 10 five times.
In the year He was fired in 2013, then after a year of calling games for the Ravens, his old teammate brought him back to Denver. Elway, the Broncos’ general manager at this point, felt the team’s championship window was closing with Peyton Manning. He wanted a new voice. In Year 1, Kubiak overcame Manning’s mid-season leg injury and quarterback controversy with Brock Osweiler to win the franchise’s third championship.
Elway later called it “one of the greatest coaching jobs I’ve ever seen.”
Shanahan’s only son never fought fate the way Kubiak’s sons did.
Kyle Shanahan was cutting down Jerry Rice’s road tree when he was a junior high and coaching as a sophomore next to Ed McCaffrey. At some point, Mike realized that his initial statement was wrong – “Kyle and my wife had a good argument. I thought he was going to be a lawyer. The boy was driven like his father.”
Kyle played at Texas early in the Mack Brown era and then immediately jumped into coaching, tagging Nipo’s baby with every pass stop. At 27 he was an NFL position coach, at 29 a coordinator, at 38 a head coach. Since his 2017 hire, the 49ers have made four NFC Championship appearances and two Super Bowls.
He’s thrived carrying the burden of his last name, but he’s also suffering from the only loophole in his diagnosis, the same one his father battled against early in his career: He’s the league’s most accomplished coach without a ring.
Clint Kubiak was different. Kyle Shanahan never wanted the coaching life as much as he did — in fact, he resented it.
“I saw the hours my dad worked,” says the first-year Raiders coach. Plus, he had a plan: “I was going to play in the NFL for 20 years.”
But he tried it after a shoulder injury ruined his senior season at Colorado State. Three years later, he was earning $17,000, enough to buy an apartment. His desire to grind his way to bigger jobs was not there. Not at first. “‘Do I really want to do this?'” said Gary. He asked himself. Clint quit football and went to work in the oil fields.
His younger brother, Clay, was more defiant, swearing to anyone who asked who he was Absolutely To be a coach. He followed his brother to Colorado State, but played in just four games in four years and vowed to quit the sport after graduation. He received a master’s degree from TCU and was soon heading the English department at Jesus High School in Houston.
He found his way to the football field only when the principal told him he needed to help out with an extracurricular activity. Within a few months he was calling plays for the varsity team. He became the head coach within a year. Gary looked up from his owners.
“Man, it is. Really Good,” he told his wife Rhonda.
Soon Clay was on the phone telling his parents he needed to see them. “We were scared to death,” Gary recalls. “We didn’t know what the hell this was about.”
They met for dinner. Clay got it right.
“Dad, I think I want to try,” he said.
” try out What? Gary asked.
“I want to see if I can coach in the NFL.”
Klay Kubiak is making his sixth start of the season on Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers staff. (Robert Cianflon/Getty Images)
Clint Kubiak sat in the locker room at Levi’s Stadium and was engaged in celebration after the Broncos won it all. In the year In February 2016, he left the oil industry and re-entered coaching. He wanted it now. “I felt like I let the family down,” he said.
He was a graduate assistant at the University of Kansas, desperate to get a crack at the NFL. The following season came when Gary was added to the Broncos staff as an offensive assistant, and in the years that followed, Clint gained a reputation as one of the greatest pitchers in the league. “When you find something you love, you work day and night to be good at it,” he said.
Usually in the morning, he drags himself to work at 4:30 a.m. When he doesn’t work, he doesn’t make it home. Kyle Shanahan called him “one of the hardest workers I’ve ever been around.”
Last fall, Clint was in his seventh stop in 12 years as Shanahan’s passing game coordinator in San Francisco. With the 2025 season over, he walked into the locker room at Levi’s Stadium, where his father had been a decade earlier. He called the plays for the Super Bowl champion Seahawks.
And in the process he got a chance to become a head coach.
“I love Clint’s story because it’s a great lesson for all coaches. He’s been all over the place,” former mentor Norv Turner said. It has been on fired workers. It’s called a play in the Super Bowl. He has been in three different positions in three years. “You learn a lot more than being an assistant on a great Rams team that wins every year.”
His younger brother may be next. Clay Kubiak was 30 years old when he quit his job at Strack Jesuit College Prep in Houston. Fifteen years after Gary hired his former boss’ son as an assistant in Houston, Kyle Shanahan gave Clay the last position he held on his staff: defensive quality control. Clay earned three promotions in four years and is now the 49ers’ OC.
“I know Kyle likes him, and I honestly believe Klay could have gotten a major job this year,” Mike Shanahan said. But he wanted another year in the system: ‘I just want to take baby steps. I want to have everything,’ he said.
It’s like what his father used to tell me.
More than a schedule or routine, Gary Kubiak passed on his own self-awareness to his children, an approach to work built on old-fashioned humility. He felt he owed it to the players to explain the reasoning behind everything. It takes faith and perseverance. So is patience. A lot of patience.
Teaching takes time.
“I think that’s one of the things that’s missing in football these days,” Gary said.
That’s what the mentor taught him. Decades before regular practice around the league, Mike Shanahan had cameras installed in every room. He wanted to watch the coaches teach. Each night, he would review the tapes, then go over them with his assistants, helping them reinforce their lessons in sharp and simple ways.
Kubiak’s children initially did not appreciate the finer points of their father’s career. They only saw time and stress, the latter of which — and a few health scares — led Gary to walk away from the Broncos after the 2016 season. He led them in different directions. The teaching took them in.
“When they understood that their dad wasn’t just out there, that the field was a classroom for me, and more than anything else, this was about raising good football players, that’s when they loved it themselves,” Gary says.
The boys — Clint, Clay and Klein, now national scouts for the Cowboys — still remember sitting with Dad on Friday nights as he drew up his pregame speeches. Each week requires a different message, a different tone, and it all hinges on his ability to resonate with a room full of players. The feeling captivated them.
“What did you tell them?” They would ask him after the game.
“It’s so cool and inspiring that we wanted to hear it,” Clay says.
Now my father sits and watches the children teach. Gary practices with every Raiders and 49ers on an iPad, takes notes, keeps his phone handy. It’s purpose is to make noise, not noise. “They pick up the phone and say, ‘What are you doing at practice on Wednesday?’ “I don’t want to be the father,” he said with a laugh.
Klint calls from Las Vegas almost every day.
“I ask him questions about the plan and the draft and how he’s putting together a hit for my kids in the garage,” he says.
They hope Clint Kubiak can get the Raiders back to their winning ways. (Kenneth Richmond/Getty Images)
One of Clint’s defining characteristics is the faint drone of his speech, a voice that seems to mirror his voice. He agrees. The man has no time for theater. Except he’s running from the field after winning his first coaching game by two touchdowns.
I didn’t know Clint was capable of this feeling.
As a head coach, it obviously feels good to win for the first time. pic.twitter.com/yWcYhaHLp0
— Sam Warren (@samwarren83) September 13, 2026
“He’s straight, no hustle,” Raiders tackle Colton Miller. He said this spring.
“It’s a straight ball,” said cornerback Eric Stokes.
When general manager John Spitek told Kubiak in March that the Max Crosby trade had fallen through, the coach’s response was surprisingly short. “Great, we got Maxx back,” Kubiak told him. “Anything else you want to talk about?” And when it comes to minority owner Tom Brady, Kubiak put the seven-time Super Bowl winner bluntly: “Give me advice I don’t want to hear. It’s okay to hurt my feelings.”
He even removed the Raiders’ iconic Pirates logo from players’ hats last spring and wanted them to find it together.
Coming straight out of high school and into the league, Klay Kubiak is eager to see if he can cut it. He is not naive. He knew his last name helped. He knows what gets you in the door won’t stay in the building.
“I’m very, very lucky,” Clay said. “(But) like I say to every player, we all feel we have to prove ourselves.” We all feel that we should get our job every day with the work we have done, the results we have achieved. “
Results have never been the case, not for the Shanahans and Kubiaks. A football family has been center stage since the night John Elway picked up his first Lombardi. Another won’t stick in the shadows for long.
