Kyle Shanahan has been the San Francisco 49ers head coach for a little over six months now, and every day seems to bring a new challenge he never faced as an assistant coach. He is still the 49ers offensive coordinator, but being head coach means so much more administrative planning and decision-making.
On Thursday, Shanahan made an appearance on KNBR, and he talked about the differences in his new job. For example, he realized Wednesday night that he had to figure out the team captains.
“Just hit me late last night, who’s gonna pick the captains? And then I just realized I gotta do that before kickoff ... I hadn’t even thought about the captains until somebody asked me yesterday. Honestly, if somebody didn’t ask me, I probably would have been sitting there looking out at the coin toss and wondering why no one was out there.”
I am actually a little bit surprised that through the course of NFL head coaching hires, we have not seen a preseason debut where a coach forgets to figure out his captains and nobody is out there for the coin toss. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone made a last minute call on it because they had forgotten, but I suppose we’ll never know for sure!
Shanahan talked about all the things that have come up, and what he has to figure out between now and Friday night. They have to figure out timing on pre-game warmups, when players will come out of the tunnel, and just a host of general schedule things that he never dealt with as an offensive coordinator.
A coach never stops learning, but that first year for Kyle Shanahan is going to feature something new practice every day.