Dan Le Batard isn’t buying Kyle Shanahan’s car crash explanation
· Yahoo Sports
On July 14, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was involved in a car crash. It didn’t become public knowledge until July 25, but every subsequent detail — and omission — affixes another question mark over the entire story.
Shanahan’s accident was likely only disclosed over the weekend because he was so severely injured that everyone would have noticed once San Francisco’s training camp opened this week.
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Shanahan suffered a concussion, a broken hand, a broken nose, three broken ribs, and he needed 40 stitches on his face, according to ESPN’s Nick Wagoner. Chris Simms, Shanahan’s longtime friend, revealed that Shanahan “could have lost his right eye.” 49ers general manager John Lynch told reporters that Shanahan is “basically gonna be in the [concussion] protocol” and he isn’t currently capable of fulfilling his usual coaching duties.
The reporting has been wishy-washy, at best, around what led to the crash, including the official record initially incorrectly stating the other driver was at fault. The speculation led Shanahan to set the record straight with local reporters on Tuesday, July 28. He said “it crushed me hearing the girl get blamed for it” before detailing what happened.
“I was going 20 miles an hour,” Shanahan said, per Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle. “I was not on my phone. But I dropped my phone and it was stuck [between] my seats. It was on my lap, and it slid off. And I went down to look for it, and took my eyes off the road for two seconds, and as I was coming up, the airbags hit my face and broke my nose. And then they said the visor really gashed me.”
The Dan Le Batard Show crew doesn’t think the story should end there.
“I was not aware until Kyle Shanahan spoke to some local reporters yesterday that you could get into an accident at 20 miles an hour that would cause 40 stitches in your face, break your nose, break your hand, and cause a concussion so severe that you couldn’t work for weeks,” Le Batard said to open Wednesday’s The Dan Le Batard Show.
Co-hosts Jonathan Zaslow called the situation “weird,” while Greg Cote added, “I doubt it, frankly. I mean, I’m skeptical here.”
“He was not on his phone,” Le Batard said. “That would be a crime. That would make him liable. That would be problematic criminally, if he’s admitting, so what he has said is that he was fishing around for his phone.”
“Pretty handy excuse,” Cote said, to which Le Batard agreed.
This led to a larger discussion in the room about how dangerous it is to drive now in such a distracted society before Le Batard refocused the conversation on Shanahan:
“When coaches get in trouble, we like to sniff around. When it smells like coverup or conspiracy, we do so more. A head coach injuring himself in an accident where he gets 40 stitches, breaks his ribs, breaks his nose, and breaks his hand, and — this is the key part — can’t do his job right now because he’s got a concussion says that he was going 20 miles an hour, says that the accident was his fault now. That the report is wrong, which as soon as I see that, I’m like, ‘OK, what did the police do here? So what happened here?’
In the 11 or 13 days of silence since the accident, plenty of people wondered, ‘Well what else is here?’ Now he’s explained it, and to me, it feels like there are more questions than there were before this started because he’s volunteering, ‘Hey, this is my fault.’ Volunteering that why?
You didn’t volunteer that from the beginning. You’re volunteering it now. Why are you volunteering that now? What are you afraid we’re gonna find out in that report — or what should have been that report — that you’re saying, ‘No, no, no, no, my bad!’ But 13 days later.”
The Palo Alto Police Department released a statement through Wagoner after the Shanahan admission.
“Kyle Shanahan’s statement that he provided is correct and that he was found at fault for the collision,” it reads. “There was a clerical error in the preparation of the report that was transmitted to the State database. We are in the process of correcting that error. It is the officer’s discretion at the scene of the collision as to whether they issue a citation to either party. It is not uncommon for officers to elect to not issue a citation to either party involved in a collision. Neither party in this situation was provided preferential treatment.”
A bit later, Le Batard segued into a larger point about journalism in the new media age.
“What makes it suspicious is why was it a secret?” – DLS on Kyle Shanahan’s accident pic.twitter.com/fooIzl0vHl
— The Dan Le Batard Show (@LeBatardShow) July 29, 2026
“There is no obligation in sports to cover this stuff like journalists,” he said. “ESPN made that so, but there’s not actually that responsibility. We can leave these people alone. We can cover them the way we did many years ago when none of this stuff was on limits. It was all off limits. And I think the athletes and the power brokers would prefer it that way. The power always prefers that you can’t actually shame them with the truth, but now that we’re in an age where the truth doesn’t actually shame and you realize the power of the press isn’t much of a power if when we tell the truth, it doesn’t cause shame if you can just get around it.
“I’ll just deny it. I’ll say I was driving 20 miles an hour. I will say that it’s my fault now — the accident is my fault — and I’ll make it look like accountability when, no, you were kind of forced out into the light on this one.”
Fairly or unfairly, Shanahan won’t escape these questions until he’s healed enough to return to the sideline as one of the NFL’s best coaches.
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