Questions linger regarding Shanahan's car accident
Mike Florio still has unanswered questions regarding Kyle Shanahan's car accident and the way the San Francisco 49ers handled the situation.
Video Transcript
There's still questions with the Kyle Shanahan car accident, and it all traces to the fact that the team deliberately hid the thing for 11 days.
If they had just come clean from the get-go, I don't think these questions would still be lingering, and I don't know that we're ever gonna get answers.
The Palo Alto Police Department not releasing the accident report, not releasing the 911 call, not releasing the body cam footage from the officers who responded to the scene.
That's weird.
Kyle's explanations do have at least one fairly significant inconsistency.
When he met with reporters in his office, not on camera, he wanted to clear up the notion that the other driver was at fault.
There supposedly was a clerical error in the California Highway Patrol database that showed she was at fault, and of course, we won't know whether it's a clerical error or actually from the report because they're not giving the public the report.
But when he explained that, he said phone was on his lap, and it fell.
And what I gathered from the accounts that came secondhand from the reporters is it slid from his lap, and we've all had this happen.
Slide, slides off the lap and goes into that spot between the seat and the console where it just kind of disappears.
And, I mean, sometimes you gotta get out of the car and move the seat all the way up, move the seat all the way back.
It's a pain in the ass to fish things out of there.
That's what we were led to believe.
He reached down, took his eyes off the road, and then next thing he knows, car's crossed the line, head-on collision with the other vehicle.
What he said Saturday, he said it had gone all the way to his backseat.
Had to reach around into the backseat to get it.
That's inconsistent.
If the 49ers had been upfront about this thing from the get-go, we may think nothing of it.
Those inconsistencies become relevant because we're trying to understand why they were acting like they have something to hide.
Usually, people act like they have something to hide when they have something to hide.
Rarely does someone act like they have something to hide when they have nothing to hide.
So from the outset, the setup, 11 days coordinating with ESPN, clearly coordinating with ESPN as to how this was gonna be released and reported.
The news organizations covering the 49ers completely in the dark, and maybe it's because the Palo Alto Police Department pressed buttons and pulled levers and kept things from being available.
Who knows?
There hasn't been a whole lot of zeal, frankly, from the press corps covering the 49ers to get some of these lingering questions answered, and I understand it.
They don't wanna screw up their access.
They don't wanna be the asshole that is making problems for the team 'cause then they come around and they ask for something.
"Hey, can I get an interview?
Can I, can I get some off-the-record commentary?
Can I do this?
Can I do that?"
It's just like a judge.
There's a lot of discretion that the team can exercise.
You don't wanna piss off the team that you cover.
They're the only team you cover.
If you can't adequately cover that team, you're gonna be covering something else.
Regardless, because of the way the 49ers handled this, there are questions, and there are questions about And look, this is not uncommon.
The head of security at every team, Sims and I were talking about this yesterday, that person is also a fixer, and it may just be that the fixer was wired to fix things.
You fix thing, fix things that don't need to be fixed.
You keep things out of the public eye because that's just what you do, without even having the conversation as to whether or not this is something that needs to be kept out of the public eye, and it creates this atmosphere where people are wondering, "What the hell really happened here?"
So look, the days keep moving forward.
The practices are happening.
The preseason games are coming.
The bright, shiny objects are rolling down the assembly line.
This thing is gonna be forgotten quickly.
My point is, there are still questions that need to be answered, and I don't know if we're ever gonna get the answers.
We ultimately may need to activate the Pablo Torre bat signal to get the answers to the unanswered questions.
