Fostering a feeling of family for 49ers
Beathards’ loss deeply felt by players, coach
The NFL is a merciless machine, filled with roster churn and nonguaranteed salaries, that routinely discards players without sentiment.
Given that, talk of teams being a “family” can inspire eyerolling among those on the outside of such a brutal multibilliondollar business.
However, on Saturday night, even the most cynical might have joined the 49ers and their head coach in fighting back tears as they struggled to discuss a tragedy that had befallen one of their own, a player they termed a family member.
About 16 hours before the 49ers kicked off their 3431 victory over the Rams, Clayton Beathard, the younger brother of quarterback C.J. Beathard, was one of two men fatally stabbed outside a bar in Nashville.
Beathard, a junior quarterback at Long Island University, was 22. He was one of three brothers and five siblings in a closeknit family.
After learning of his brother’s death, C.J. Beathard called Kyle Shanahan around 3 a.m.,
and the head coach went downstairs at the team hotel to meet his quarterback.
Shanahan said he’d never experienced a similar moment. He instinctively wrapped Beathard in a hug and kept quiet for long moments during the hour they spent together.
“You just try to hold a person and be there for him,” Shanahan said. “… When you try to say stuff, you’re just — you’re insulting the situation.”
Teams often take their cues from their head coach, and Shanahan, 40, has set a tone with his honesty and vulnerability during his three seasons with the 49ers.
On Saturday night, he paused for several seconds, fighting his emotions, before starting his news conference by discussing Clayton Beathard’s death and its impact on his devastated family.
Moments earlier, in the locker room, Shanahan’s voice cracked as he relayed C.J. Beathard’s final words to him before he left the team hotel and traveled home to Tennessee: “Make sure the guys go win this game.”
Shanahan didn’t mention Beathard’s message as part of his pregame talk. He understood it would trivialize the Beathards’ loss.
“I didn’t want to say anything (before the game) because this game doesn’t mean anything compared to his brother,” Shanahan said via video on the team’s website. “We all know that.”
As Shanahan spoke in the locker room, right guard Daniel Brunskill wiped away tears. Later, right tackle Mike McGlinchey’s eyes welled and his voice became hoarse as he spoke to reporters. Cornerback Richard Sherman echoed Shanahan, saying what they’d just offered Beathard wouldn’t lessen his grief.
“All we could do is win,” Sherman said. “… What he lost is something that’s irreplaceable.”
Saturday’s lockerroom scene was similar to one that played out Dec. 8 after a win at New Orleans. Afterward, Shanahan announced game balls would be given to each member of the York family following a game that was played one day after the oneyear anniversary of the death of Tony York, the brother of CEO Jed York, who died by suicide at 35.
Shanahan wrapped an arm around Dr. John York’s shoulder as the team’s cochairman fought to maintain his composure while addressing the team. Shanahan later embraced York when he was finished and turned to his players.
“We talk about everyone being family,” Shanahan said. “And you say it on a lot of teams. But as we’ve known all year, it’s different here.”
Two weeks later, the players, most of whom had never met Clayton Beathard, were griefstricken for their teammate Saturday night.
“There’s a lot more out there and more important things than a football game,” McGlinchey said. “We lost part of our family today. C.J.’s heart is broken and our heart is broken for him. … It shows what we have here — the family that this place has become. We play for something that’s a lot bigger than us and a lot bigger than ourselves. …
“As cliche as everybody wants to make football sound, this place is a family, and it starts with that first.”
Shanahan’s humanity has helped create that feeling in a coldblooded business.
He and general manager John
Lynch pledged after they were hired to make every effort to both meet with each player they released, even shorttimers on the roster’s fringe. Their sensitivity in this area is the primary reason they’ve strongly objected to being the team featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks,” which routinely shows players being cut during training camp.
Shanahan, whose postgame message to his players Saturday was dotted with profanity, struggles to be inauthentic. With reporters, he’s let a curse word slip during a live news conference and caught himself countless times before another expletive was sent flying. Shanahan freely discloses injury information, it seems, partly because he’s proved to be such a poor liar on the topic.
Shanahan’s candor with his players, of course, is more important. Players might not always enjoy his straightshooting messages, but they’ve come to trust he’s telling them the truth.
Shanahan arrived with a reputation as a prickly playcalling robot, and even Lynch has said he didn’t know whether Shanahan’s leadership skills would come close to matching his offensive acumen.
Nearly three years ago, shortly after her husband was hired, Mandy Shanahan laughed at that perception in an interview with The Chronicle.
“Kyle’s been one of the most sensitive people I’ve ever been around, in a good way,” she said. “He’s so in tune with people’s emotions and how people feel.”
In the early hours of Saturday morning, Shanahan, now the leader of a team with a 123 record and special bond, couldn’t imagine the pain Beathard was feeling.
So the coach held his quarterback. And he honored the moment by staying silent.