Run Game Coordinator/Offensive Line Chris Foerster Press Conference

Run Game Coordinator/Offensive Line Chris Foerster

Press Conference – September 26, 2024

San Francisco 49ers

You’d said in the summer that OL Jaylon Moore was pretty much exclusively a left tackle out of necessity. Has he been able to get more?

“He gets a little work the right side. He’s been getting work since the start of the season. Wednesdays, [T] Trent [Williams] is usually off, and then Thursdays he’s back at practice, so he’s able to get a little bit more work at both tackles. As is, we’re working [OL] Spencer Burford to tackle as well.”

When you look at New England’s front, what does it look like to you? They have New England Patriots DL Keion White who is big and fast and athletic.

“They’re good. Man, 99 and [New England Patriots LB Joshua Uche] 55 are their two best rushers. The rest of the guys are really good rushers as well. Those are the guys that stand out the most as their most productive sackers and things like that. They push the pocket real well. They’re an excellent, they’re a well-coached defense, very good fundamentals, very good schemes. Over the course of all the time that they’ve been there, they’ve established a way to attack everything that every team does in league. If you look at enough film, you’re like, they have a way. If they know what you’re doing, they’re going to take advantage of it. They do a really nice job. They’re very well-coached, very good fundamentals, and they have good, talented players on defense.”

I think you said the game against Minnesota, you felt better about the way your line played as opposed to the first week? How was last week’s game against the Rams?

“There’s a lot of good things because you don’t, the way we’re moving the ball and then the way that we score points, [QB] Brock’s [Purdy] production. You still have to, even though we weren’t as good, to be honest. But yet, there’s the pros and the cons. We weren’t good enough, period. We weren’t as good as we were the previous two weeks, at all, in pass protection. Run-game wise, it was a productive day. For whatever reasons, the way the game played out and our scoring drives, whatever. I don’t, you can’t get into all that. But the bottom line is, it wasn’t as good of a productive day for us in pass pro.”

Is that physical one-on-one guys?

“It was physical. It was physical, yes.”

I think you guys, for the first three weeks, have almost double the amount of three-man rushes that you’re seeing, at least that Brock’s facing, in terms of pass attempts. Anything you can put your finger on as to maybe why teams are doing that to you guys more than others?

“I’d like to say it’s because we pass block so well. So they don’t want to rush, they drop, right? But that would be a heresy to say that. Everybody has their own reasons for doing things. Whatever the situations are, maybe they think what we’re trying to get done, maybe we have formation things that they’ve thought that, ‘Hey, this is one where they’re leaving people.’ There are so many different reasons. Again, when [Miami Dolphins defensive coordinator] Vic Fangio was the defensive coordinator in Houston, and I was in Baltimore at the time, it was as simple for him as if [former NFL TE] Todd Heap was on the ball, he knew we were releasing, and we were going to have a five-man protection, he rushed six. The second Todd Heap was off the ball, we’re usually in a six or seven-man protection, he dropped eight and rushed three. So just by Heap being on or off the ball, he set a whole game plan up rushing three or rushing more than three for the whole game. And that was his tell, whatever the percentages we did it, he decided to go with it. So I tell that story to relate that whatever it could be a laundry list of things that the defensive coordinator looks at [former NFL head coach Don] Shula and says, ‘Hey, this is why we’re going to rush three in these situations. This is what they do. This is our best chance to get them stopped.’ Or just change of pace. Sometimes, we say it’s like a rolodex. They’re just a rolodex defense. They’re just, ‘Okay, here’s the next one.’ And they just roll it and just to keep you off balance. It just depends.”

It would seem like that would maybe put more pressure on the line to protect longer, just because maybe things are taking a little longer to open up with eight dropping back in coverage. Is that a fair assessment and what is kind of the challenge of keeping those things locked up?

“You saw the plays. I mean Brock’s back there, everybody gets nervous. You like, the timing of the, the timing of an NFL pocket, we all know, we talked about it a little bit with earlier in this, two weeks ago in Minnesota. We weren’t quite synced. It was a little bit of everybody, right? And so, the ball wasn’t coming out. You get one hitch, maybe two hitches. Three-man rush, it’s like, ‘Okay, I’ve taken two, I’ve taken three hitches.’ And you get, you see him, he’s like, ‘where do I go?’ Because you’re not used to just realizing it’s just a three-man rush. And then with us, it’s the same thing. You block, you’re like, ‘Okay, there’s one hitch.’ You can’t see it, but you feel the timing in your head. There’s two and then the ball should be gone. You’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know it was a three-man rush.’ And then all of a sudden, Brock’s still standing back there and guys are working to get open and it’s just different. And you can’t do it out here. You just, you get used to it. You’re like, ‘Oh.’ And that’s why you see, I remind them they’re mixing in the three-man rush. So if it feels like the play is still going when it shouldn’t be going, it’s because it is. Because most times it’s pass block, the ball’s thrown, the D-Linemen take off. Well now you’re here, and they’re like, they’re not taking off, but yet they should be, there’s just that whole, and for us, you, me watching a game, we’re like, ‘Yeah, it’s three-man rush. It’s going to take some time.’ Them, ‘I can’t see anything. I’m blocking this number eight over me. And all of a sudden it’s like, why is he still rushing and why is the ball not thrown?’ That’s what happens.”

RB Jordan Mason, he could be your number one back for a while. I guess no one really knows. Do you have to guard against giving him too much work? He didn’t get a crazy amount of caries against the Rams. But just in general, philosophically, just guard against him wearing down?

“You always have to keep it in mind. You really do. You get to a point where you just have to keep an eye on a guy, right? Like I said, the guy doesn’t have a lot of tread on the tire. He has a lot of tread left on a tire, because he hasn’t run a lot in his career. So the guy’s a fairly young, fresh, good player. Ran a lot in college, but again, he was behind a guy that was the guy that, I think it’s [Detroit Lions RB Jahmyr] Gibbs, that’s in Detroit. So he didn’t get the carries there either. So he’s not a worn down guy. So he probably can take more. You just have to keep an eye on it. If you see him starting to tire, if you see cuts that don’t look as crisp as they used to look, you see him missing some things. You don’t see it at all right now, and it takes a long time. You saw [RB] Christian was, and you never really saw it. You see, every now and then you say, yeah, I think I saw it in the Washington game. I’m like, ‘You know, we probably, he’s getting ground down a little bit and we need to get him rotated something.’ I think that was last year or somewhere, I felt it. But I don’t remember exactly. But the point of it is, you just have to keep an eye on it. Every player you do.”

You talked about rolodex defense. Some coordinators have that ability. Former NFL head coach Bill Belichick, obviously, had that ability. Is New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo, borrowing Belichick’s concepts already? Is he changing things up? He played for him, obviously.

“Yeah, it hasn’t changed much from last year. Actually, it’s pretty much the same. The word is that he’s tried to make it, I’ve heard it through the media, I don’t know this to be a fact, but they’re trying to make it a little simpler. They felt with Bill, it was always, there was always pushing. And I don’t know this, it sounded like they’re pushing the envelope. And so, anybody even – here it is with coach Belichick, right? The next guy takes over. Well there’s, we’re always going to make it better than it was. If somebody takes over for somebody takes over here, for [Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim] Harbaugh, somebody takes over here for, then you’re, ‘Oh yeah, well we’re going to do it this way and they did it that way.’ There’s always that give and take of that. But at its core, it’s the same thing. Same coaches, same guys. It’s going to be their spin on it, because obviously coach isn’t there to still run the show. I can’t call him Bill, I don’t know.”

For years, this franchise had former New England Patriots coach Dante Scarnecchia is our neck, he as the O-Line coach. I know he’s not there, but do you have a relationship with Dante? And some people credit him with a big part of that dynasty, do you credit him with that?

“Yeah, Dante was, as much as an O-Line coach can have an influence, it’s still [former NFL QB] Tom Brady and it’s still the head coach and still everybody else. But Dante was a, Dante was old school man. Dante was tough, Dante was hard-nosed. They did what they did, sometimes to a fault. Sometimes we’re, I hear [former NFL head coach] Josh [McDaniels] say, ‘I can’t get anything past the old man to run a new play or a new concept.’ But what they did was very, very good. They were very sound fundamentally, and there was no BS. Now that’s kind of how that organization was run from top to bottom. But he was at the heart of it, and he was a big part of it on offense, to make sure that everything was held together and tight. And he did a great job. I knew Dante way back when. I don’t have a very close, personal relationship with Dante. But Dante is really good. I went through some hard times and there’s a lot of people that, there’s some people that haven’t reconnected with me. Dante was a guy that very early in all that, reached out to me. Dante’s a guy that afterwards was very open. When Dante retired for a brief time, he said, ‘Hey, if you ever have time to come by and visit me, I’d love to see you. We could sit and talk some ball. I want to do it in retirement.’ Then he came back to coach the next year or two after that. But Dante is just a really quality man, a hardworking guy, and I really respected what he did. We didn’t do things the same way, but I respected, [former NFL offensive line coach] Howard Mudd was another guy like that I respected so much of what he did. I wouldn’t, I didn’t do a lot of it the same way, but I really respected what they did.”

What did you make of RB Isaac Guerendo’s performance?

“Loved him. Loved him. We had, oh man, if you guys watched the all 22, if you saw the play, [OL Aaron] Banks went up to get a linebacker and kind of didn’t go right at him, he kind of slipped and fell on his butt and, but it was right about on the 50. That’s a good feeling, right on the emblem. He fell backwards and missed the linebacker on that play. If he’d have got on that guy, there was a crease that he, I would’ve loved to see if he would’ve hit it. If he just could have, I thought he might have split the safety. He reminds me of another 31 [Miami Dolphins RB Raheem Mostert] we had here in his running style. He’s got that upright, good-speed running style. And I’m not putting him in that category yet, but he really does. I want to see him get a chance to get, we just haven’t gotten him the space yet. I like him. He’s got a ways to go, obviously. He’s got a lot of developing to do. And that position is a hard, tough position. But he’s nothing but a positive upside. He really looks to be that, I won’t say change of pace. Shoot, he could be your lead dog, but he’s got that little, that extra gear we’ve been looking for in a change between, Christian’s playing fast, JP’s playing fast, but he’s got a little bit something different from those guys.”

When you say upright, and I realize it worked for Raheem Mostert, but usually you hear or us like, “Oh, upright is not good, you’re going to get smashed around in the NFL.” Can that be okay for certain guys?

“It can be, yeah. I mean, you’re going to get hit. You’ve seen Raheem. I might say the name 31 was Raheem, right? Raheem was the track guy. He’s an upright runner. You saw it, right? He’d run and he’d be gone. He’s learned to play with pad level when he needed to. But it does, you play with the lower center of gravity, you play lower to the ground, you’re not going to be as fast. That’s why sprinters don’t run hunched over. These guys are sprinters. They’re straight upright, and they’re running their butt off. And so that’s Isaac. I really like the way he runs and he’s learning to get his pads down so it’s not always great, but it hasn’t slowed him down yet.”