What Kyle Shanahan is Really Like

He's complicated.

Grant Cohn | Apr 15, 2020

What Kyle Shanahan is Really Like /

Did a podcast Wednesday with my dad talking about some of the key personalities on the 49ers. Here is Kyle Shanahan.

In Kyle Shanahan’s head, there’s a football field, and he’s always designing plays on it. He can’t stop. He’s a creative artist, and decidedly inward, the way creative people are.

Shanahan lives in his head.

He is capable of being social, but would rather spend the day alone drawing plays in an office. Bill Walsh was the same way.

Shanahan probably is the 49ers’ most creative offensive coach since Walsh. Shanahan isn’t always a brilliant play caller -- he makes some strange decisions in the fourth quarter of Super Bowls when the pressure is on. But Shanahan certainly is a flat-out brilliant play designer. He might be the best in the NFL right now, even better than Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. No one gets players more wide open than Shanahan. Every coach worth his salt studies Shanahan’s offensive scheme and steals from it. That’s standard homework.

Shanahan is so into his offense, he may not want input from other people. Again, Walsh was the same way. He grew out of that mentality, and Shanahan may as well.

This offseason, Shanahan decided not to sign Tom Brady, who was a free agent. Shanahan had lots of reasons not to sign him, but one might have been Brady’s age and experience. Brady is two years older than Shanahan and has won six Super Bowls. Brady probably would want input on the scheme. He might tell Shanahan, “I don’t like this play; it doesn’t work for me.” And Shanahan might feel threatened. Just a theory.

Shanahan is complicated. He’s nice, but also extremely blunt and honest. Sometimes he comes across as negative, because he doesn’t coddle players. Most modern coaches are coddlers. Shanahan tells players the truth. And he tells the media the truth about his players. From a journalist’s perspective, Shanahan is a gift from God.

Most coaches obscure the truth. They say, “I have to look at the film first.”

Shanahan never would say that. It’s beneath him.

Published Apr 15, 2020

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.