Kyle Shanahan Update: He's Turning the Corner, and Camp Is Feeling It
Pads are on, practices are getting physical, and Kyle Shanahan is closer to being fully back in the middle of it. Two and a half weeks removed from a car accident that broke his nose, three ribs, and his hand, the coach is starting to look like himself again.
Camp has a way of telling you the truth fast, and the truth this week is a good one: Kyle Shanahan looks like a coach who is genuinely getting better, not just a coach who is showing up because the calendar says he has to. The first padded practice of the summer came and went with real physicality, Greenlaw and McCaffrey included, and Shanahan was out there taking it in, more involved by the day than he was a week ago. For a guy who was dealing with a severe concussion, a broken nose, three broken ribs, and a broken hand less than three weeks ago, that is exactly the trajectory Niner Nation was hoping for and, frankly, needed to see.
Nobody is rushing this, and that's the right call. A concussion doesn't run on a football schedule, and the staff has been careful about how much they put on him early, letting Chris Foerster and the rest of one of the deepest coaching rooms in the league carry the install while Shanahan works his way back to full speed. But "careful" hasn't meant "absent." He's on the practice fields more each day, he's more hands-on with the install than he was at the start of the week, and the version of him running around the fringes of these padded practices already looks a lot closer to the coach who has this roster believing in a Super Bowl run than the one who was in a hospital bed three weeks ago.
It matters more than usual this year, too, because of how loaded this roster actually is. This isn't a rebuilding team that can afford to ease its head coach in over a full season. This is a team with Purdy playing the best football of his career, a fully healthy McCaffrey, Mike Evans and Christian Kirk in the receiver room, Bosa and Warner back from injury, and now Deebo Samuel back in the building on a bargain deal. Every piece of that only works at its ceiling with Shanahan fully running it. So every day this week that he looks a little more like himself, a little more locked into the install, a little less limited than the day before, is a genuinely big deal for how this season is shaping up.
Read the room around the building right now and the tone is cautious optimism bordering on relief. The scary part of this story was always the first 48 hours, when nobody knew how bad it really was. The recovery part is the part everyone can actually watch play out in real time, and what we're watching right now is a guy healing on schedule, getting more involved in camp with every practice, and clearly itching to get all the way back to being the one calling every rep. That's the version of this story Niner Nation wanted from the start. Keep healing, coach. It's working.
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