The San Francisco 49ers have been one of the unluckiest franchises in the entire league when it comes to their injury luck. Seemingly every year, injuries severely hold back the team.
This season, the bad luck started before the season even got underway. Right before training camp, it was revealed that head coach Kyle Shanahan was in a serious car accident and suffered serious injuries. However, it took 11 days for the crash to be reported, which prompted one NFL insider to call out his sports-media peers.
Mike Florio Takes Aim at Adam Schefter and Co. for Sitting On Kyle Shanahan Car Crash News
The car accident was very serious, as Shanahan broke his nose, three ribs, and his hand, and needed more than 40 stitches in his face, and suffered a severe concussion. Shanahan is still experiencing concussion symptoms, so he is going to need some time to make a full recovery. Thankfully, the accident and injuries weren’t life-threatening.
Now, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk is shining a light on the reporting of the incident. The accident occurred on July 14, yet reports and details only surfaced 11 days later on July 25, just before the 49ers began training camp.
Florio found this suspicious. But to make matters worse, ESPN’s Adam Schefter waited until right after the official word from the organization to put out his report, which featured a ton of new details.
“The 49ers posted their statement regarding the accident at 12:00 p.m. ET on Saturday. Adam Schefter of ESPN posted his first tweet on the situation exactly one minute later, at 12:01 p.m. ET. The ESPN article about the accident was published at 12:02 p.m. ET,” Florio wrote.
As a result, Florio speculates that the network may have cut a deal with the 49ers to withhold that information until they announced it, perhaps in exchange for exclusive details.
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But Schefter wasn’t the only reporter who had some knowledge of the situation. Florio pointed to Tim Kawakami of the San Francisco Standard. Hours before the 49ers’ announcement, he tweeted, “I think there’s going to be some news later this morning.” This prompted some harsh words from Florio.
“Brokering a deal (either in exchange for more facts or because the team asks nicely) to hold publicly-available information until the team decides to disclose it isn’t journalism. It’s the antithesis of journalism,” Florio said.
Kawakami was quick to fire back against Florio, explaining that he didn’t have enough information to report on the accident.
“Florio can attack me all he wants. He’s trolling, which he does sometimes,” he said. “I knew around Thursday that Shanahan wouldn’t do the presser yesterday. I knew he likely wasn’t going to be coaching at the start of camp. I could guess why. I didn’t know exactly. CONSPIRACY! COMPLYING!”
The Continued Backlash Against Adam Schefter
Florio wasn’t the only one to call out Schefter and Co. NFL podcaster Tony Farmer also tweeted about the odd coverage around the incident, pointing to the timing of the tweets from Schefter and the 49ers as evidence.
“Adam Schefter posted the Kyle Shanahan story exactly 1 minute after the 49ers. It’s possible Schefter sat on the and made an agreement with the 49ers to let them break the story on their timeline and give him a heads up so he can be the first to piggyback it,” the podcaster wrote. “I’m speculating, but this is one of the ways insiders earn brownie points with teams so they can keep getting info.”
“How long were reporters sitting on news of Kyle Shanahan’s car crash? Hours? Days?” he added.
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As a result, he came to the same conclusion as Florio. “Not enough time to receive the news and type all that in less than a minute. This was a planned and coordinated news release on a Saturday before camp. Schefter knew. Kawakami knew.”
Finally, he highlighted the double standards at play. While some incidents are immediately reported by the media, other news items are closely guarded until the team decides it’s the right time to release them.
He questioned, “How are some people like Kyle Shanahan and Mike Vrabel’s son able to have interactions with the police/accidents that go unreported for several days, while others get absolutely buried within hours of the arrest? If you look carefully, we are all getting a lesson on the politics behind sports reporters and Insiders. Too many examples to name.”
It’s interesting to see Florio and Farmer call out their sports-media peers for their behind-the-scenes practices.
Florio summed up his take on the matter with the following message: “Reporters owe a primary duty to their audience, not to the entities they cover. In sports, that line started to blur when leagues and teams began hiring reporters to cover them. Twenty years later, that line is long gone.”
