Programming note: Watch Matt Maiocco’s full interview with Kyle Shanahan on “49ers Game Plan,” airing at 9 p.m. PT Friday on NBC Sports Bay Area.
The 49ers will be wearing their white jerseys for home games at Levi’s Stadium during the 2025 NFL season as a new precaution to avoid the South Bay heat.
Ahead of San Francisco’s home-opening Week 3 game against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday afternoon — in which the home team will debut its nontraditional look — coach Kyle Shanahan explained the backstory behind the decision to temporarily abandon red in an exclusive interview for NBC Sports Bay Area’s “49ers Game Plan” with Matt Maiocco.
“Yeah … I was bothered last year [against the Cardinals] because of how hot it was, so we tried to wear our whites,” Shanahan told Maiocco. “When I coached in Tampa Bay, or [when] you’ve coached on the East Coast and you know how hot and humid it’d be earlier in the year, we’d do this a lot.
“Out here, we don’t worry about it that much; it never got that hot out here. But it definitely did that week, and we knew it was going to come, so we tried to wear our whites, and the league said we couldn’t do it unless we told them at the beginning of the year. So we had to decide in like April this year, and definitely don’t know if it’s going to be hot or not, so we just had to guess.”
Shanahan recalled the 49ers’ 24-23 afternoon loss to the Cardinals in Week 5 of the 2024 season; there was a high of 97 degrees on that Oct. 6 Sunday.
The dreadful, sweaty experience led Shanahan and the 49ers to dress as cool as possible during the following — current — campaign.
“We planned it out this way in case it was hot. And I think it’s supposed to be — not too hot. But yeah, we had to plan it a long time ago, so we would’ve been in all-whites, even if it was raining and cold. We had to guess six months prior.”
Time will tell if San Francisco’s white jerseys will help the on-field product.
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