On Friday, San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan addressed the media for the final time before the team’s Week 11 game against the Seattle Seahawks. During the presser, Shanahan yet again had a rather testy interaction with 49ers reporter Grant Cohn.
Cohn, who covers the team for Sports Illustrated’s FanNation site, has gotten under Shanahan’s skin in the past. Most notably, Shanahan called out Cohn back in July after he asked a question regarding his relationship with Brandon Aiyuk, who had asked for a trade this past offseason.
On Friday, Cohn came with a far less challenging question for Shanahan, asking him whether he puts more on Brock Purdy’s plate in terms of pre-snap adjustments as he continues to gain more experience. But again, Shanahan wasn’t particularly interested in giving Cohn a straight answer, instead suggesting he had already answered his question.
“Have I not already answered your questions that your article is already written on? Am I not giving you the right quotes? Yeah, I don’t think you understand,” said Shanahan. “It’s not about earning more. We put as much as Brock, with double play calls, triple play calls, as anyone. Just because you don’t see someone do a hand signal or something… Not as many teams do that. They used to do that a long time ago. But that’s not really what it’s like. Just semantics of how you get to it. But not many offenses in this league that don’t give you a quarterback a few options.”
At the end of the day, Shanahan did somewhat answer Cohn’s question. But his tone was pretty condescending given that the nature of the question was a pretty fair one that any coach should be able to answer without issue.
This led to Cohn taking to social media on Saturday to offer his thoughts on the rather uncomfortable interaction, calling Shanahan “arrogant” in his approach to both the question and his handling of Purdy altogether.
“If you’ve watched the video, you can see that Kyle Shanahan really didn’t like the question,” said Cohn. “He started making faces. He said that I didn’t know what I was talking about. I had to really stick with it and follow up a few times politely and professionally. And if you go back and look at the transcript, to his credit, after his faces he did answer the question.
“What Kyle does is he gives Brock Purdy two or three plays to choose from pre-snap. Because from Kyle’s perspective, his play designs are perfect. And the idea of changing a route in a play design is like changing an ingredient in a Michelin star dish. It’s out of the question. In Kyle’s mind, if he gives Brock two plays, one of those two plays will have all the answers to what the defense is presenting. That’s how arrogant Kyle Shanahan is. That’s him, his plays are perfect and nobody better ever change them or tweak them. And that goes for Brock Purdy.”
Cohn went on to blame Shanahan’s “arrogance” for not getting someone like Tom Brady, who would almost certainly want more freedom as a quarterback than Purdy is seemingly getting.
As you can tell, Cohn seemingly isn’t Shanahan’s biggest fan either. Whether that is due to their strained relationship in the past is up for debate. But clearly, this latest interaction won’t help matters moving forward.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.