Kyle Shanahan Reminisces About Thanksgiving

Shanahan is more relatable than he seems.

Grant Cohn | Nov 21, 2023

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San Francisco 49ers

Thanksgiving is a work day in the NFL.

Teams either practice all day for their upcoming game on Sunday or play in front of the entire country on Thanksgiving. That's what the 49ers will do this Thursday -- they'll face the Seahawks in Seattle on Thursday Night Football. Of course, they'd rather spend the day with their families, but that's not the reality of the NFL.

Ask Kyle Shanahan. He's not just a head coach -- he's an NFL lifer. Grew up around the league because his dad was a coach for decades. On Monday, Shanahan recalled his favorite Thanksgiving memories.

"I always loved Thanksgiving growing up because you just get to watch football all day and usually wait for my dad to get home when we all sit there starving and he gets home about five minutes before our meal," Shanahan said. "That's usually a few hours later than everyone else's. So we're all irritated with him, and now I'm in that role. But no, we got to play on Thanksgiving in Dallas when I was at Washington and we had a huge win. We started out 3-6 that year and had to go on a big run and we had a big game versus Dallas, which I feel like led our team for the rest of the year to get to the Playoffs. So that was one of the more fun Thanksgiving days I've had in NFL.”

Let's recap. Shanahan's favorite Thanksgiving memories are waiting for his dad to get home from work and coaching with him on Thanksgiving during a big win over the Cowboys.

Shanahan is more relatable than he seems.

Published Nov 21, 2023

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.