I Feel for 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan and Fear What’s Ahead for Him

Concussions are dangerous; the pain comes in waves without warning

Dec 28, 2025; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan looks on before the game against the Chicago Bears at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Six years ago, I was driving down a steep hill in San Diego, a couple of blocks from my Mission Valley apartment. To my right was a two-ton Jeep that wasn’t slowing down. I don’t have a stop sign and she does, but my heartbeat races.

She blows past the stop sign, and my mind’s eye shifts into slow-motion. The Jeep T-bones my car and spins it 360 degrees. Airbags deploy, but my head slams hard to the left. The back end of the car smashes into a three-ton truck parked on the opposite side of the street and stops on impact. I jerk forward and gasp for air. My car is an accordion and I’m lucky to be alive.

The cop at the scene told me that if not for buying this new car a month earlier, I would have been killed. It was eerie, though, that I didn’t feel any pain at the moment. I was just numb.

That’s why I’m worried for Kyle Shanahan. With injuries, you feel the pain, manage it, rehab, get better. The physical bruises go away with time. A concussion is a different thing entirely; you get almost no warning, and it flows through you like an ocean wave.

Two weeks later, I thought I was recovering well, driving on a Sunday morning down a wide boulevard. Concussion wave hits, I stop the car while still in my lane, pull the warning lights just in time and black out. Thankfully, no one hit the car. The scary part is that I have no idea how long I was out. I’m in a cold sweat, eventually drive to the nearest parking lot and try to get my bearings. Twenty minutes later I’m good enough to get out of the car and get something cold to drink.

Applying my experience to what Shanahan may feel, the dangerous thing is how suddenly a concussion strikes. You feel fine and then, bam, you’re out. And worse, you have no idea how you got there or where you are now; your consciousness just drifts. It takes a few minutes for your mind to snap back in, and you regain the sense of where you are.

How do you manage that during a football game as the 49ers head coach and continue to call plays? You don’t, you can’t. All you can do is prepare for the moment.

I had a wonderful doc help me get through my concussion. A neurologist you expect a hunched over old German tree stump with thick glasses speaking in broken English. But San Diego being San Diego, she looked like a drop-dead international supermodel, I s**t you not. She says I took a nasty hit on the left side of my brain. I wish I could tell you I said, “Good thing I’m right-brained,” but at that point I was Malt-O-Meal.

Nine months of visits to UCSD Health in La Jolla and I was declared healthy thanks to her help, but that’s relative. Given this experience, why on earth did I ever willingly leave San Diego? I blame the concussion.

Another tricky aspect, you can be assessed as healthy and the concussion is technically gone, but symptoms still flare up. A year after the accident, if I got up out of bed too quickly in the morning, I had vertigo spells; the room started spinning and I fell to the floor. Happened for years, not often, but enough. Early on, a friend of mine said you never truly recover from a concussion. Six years later I’ve found that to be true.

So what does this mean for Kyle? I had to put on a backpack to help me deal with any flare up that would hit in the moment. Ice packs, electrolyte drinks, chocolate, nuts, some fruit, and a pillow or two or three. I had to have my pack nearby. Shanahan doesn’t need to put the pack on, but he will need to access it asap.

The Niners will need to have a contingency plan if Kyle goes dark during a game, and there’s no way to predict it or feel it coming. That means someone to take over play calling and head coach immediately, a doctor on the field to help with recovery, and constant monitoring for hydration and heat management.

Based on what I went through, I don’t think Kyle should go to Melbourne; that flight would be a bad idea in my view. But I was a distance runner, not a football player. I expect Shanahan will fight to make the trip and be there for his team, but the 49ers will need to be there for him and train to react. The warning signs only hit seconds before the symptoms; they will have to prepare for everything.

Weeks 2-5 are all afternoon games, including two in Santa Clara in September in the EZ-Bake Oven. Caution and preparation will be essential.

Shanahan can manage this, but he will need a team to get him through it. The frequency of concussion symptoms go down, but they don’t go away. The next year will be a difficult one for him. Then he’ll need to be careful going forward. It’s not about the pain so much as managing it immediately when it hits. My thoughts and concerns go with him.