Why Kyle Shanahan Wears a Black 49ers Hat this Season

Kyle Shanahan cares about his appearance.

Grant Cohn | Dec 5, 2020

Kyle Shanahan cares about his appearance.

He sports a full, well-groomed beard. He wears Yeezys -- an extremely fashionable and expensive version of Adidas. And he wears a special hat.

Last season, he wore a bright crimson red 49ers hat all season, and the 49ers went to the Super Bowl. The red hat became his look, his brand, and he seemed to like the way he looked in it.

But then this season started and the red hat was gone. Poof. Just like that. Shanahan replaced it with a drab, boring gray 49ers hat, and the 49ers had a rough start to the season.

Coincidence? You be the judge.

Recently, Shanahan switched to a black 49ers hat, and suddenly the team is winning and getting healthy.

I have a feeling the black hat is here to stay. It's the most underrated member of the 2020 49ers. So of course, I asked Shanahan about the hat on Saturday.

ME: "Kyle, are you superstitious about the hats you wear? You wore that red hat to death last season, you came out with the gray hat this season, audiblized to the black hat and you seem to be sticking with it. Is that a superstitious thing?"

SHANAHAN: "I do have some superstitious. I try not to, but I have some. But no, I'm trying not to make a statement (with my hat). I wore that red hat last year, and we did really well with it, and it became extremely superstitious to my wife. So even when I got a little sick of it and wanted to change it, it wasn't an option according to her. So I didn't want to start out this year stuck with it, so I just put on whatever hat I felt like wearing just so people think I'm not trying to make a statement, which is not working the way I want it to. I'm just trying to put a hat on that's comfortable for me. And I am little OCD about what's comfortable. I don't just put anything on. Sorry."

Don't apologize to me, Kyle. Wear whatever you like. Just don't ever, ever ever ever, for the sake of the franchise, wear that gray one again.

Published Dec 5, 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.