Shanahan's wild road back to the sideline

It's been almost two weeks since Kyle Shanahan's July 14 car accident near his Bay Area home, and the details that have trickled out are rough. Per multiple reports, Shanahan broke his nose, three ribs and his hand, needed more than 40 stitches in his face, and suffered a concussion severe enough that doctors are treating it with real caution. This isn't a guy who tweaked something in practice. This is a guy who got hit by an SUV and ended up in a hospital overnight.

David Chao, who's covered NFL injuries for years, zeroed in on the phrase "severe concussion" as the real concern here — broken bones heal on a predictable clock, but head injuries don't always play by the rules. That's the backdrop for everything the 49ers have said publicly since: guarded optimism, but optimism with an asterisk.

Around the league, the reaction was less clinical. Sean McVay, who'll be standing across the field from Shanahan when the 49ers open the season against the Rams, made a point of saying he'd already reached out. "Most importantly, thank God he and the other person involved is okay," McVay told reporters, adding that he'd spoken directly with Shanahan and that "perspective is everything" in a business built around football being the most important thing in the room — until suddenly it isn't.

The bigger question for 49ers fans is obviously availability, and that's where GM John Lynch tried to put minds at ease. Lynch said the team isn't anticipating the injuries keeping Shanahan off the sideline for the Sept. 10 opener against the Rams in Melbourne, Australia — a game that's already circled as a big deal given the international setting. "That's not what we're anticipating. That's not what I've heard from the doctors," Lynch said, while also noting Shanahan has to hit the same kind of recovery markers the team requires of injured players before officially clearing the runway.

In the meantime, someone's got to run camp, and that someone is assistant head coach Chris Foerster. He took the reins for his first practice as the head guy with Shanahan reportedly standing nearby watching — not calling plays, not barking at DBs, just present. It's a small detail but it tells you where things stand: Shanahan's around the building, he's engaged, but he's not yet cleared to actually run a practice himself.

There's no defined concussion protocol for coaches the way there is for players, which is part of why this whole situation is being handled on a case-by-case basis instead of a hard timeline. But six weeks is a long runway before that Melbourne kickoff, and if Lynch's read on the doctors holds, Shanahan should have plenty of buffer to get cleared. Until then, expect Foerster to keep running the show and expect every camp update to get read as a proxy for how the recovery is actually going.