Head Coach Kyle Shanahan Press Conference

Head Coach Kyle Shanahan

Press Conference – August 13, 2022

San Francisco 49ers

Opening Comments:

“Alright guys injuries from the game, [DL] Drake Jackson ended up having just a stinger. [CB] Dontae Johnson has ribs, cartilage fracture, he’ll be week-to-week. [OL] Daniel Brunskill had a hamstring strain, he’ll be out a few weeks. [WR] Danny Gray, just some hip and back soreness, we’ll keep him out the next couple days, he should be good when we get to Minnesota. [T Mike] McGlinchey, he ended up irritating the inside of his knee. The good news was his surgical repair and all the stuff he did this offseason was good, but he has some slight irritation in his knee, so we’re going to have to be smart with him this week. I’ll be surprised if he does anything in Minnesota. [LB] Curtis Robinson had a groin strain, he’ll miss most likely this week. And hopefully we’ll get [CB Emmanuel] Moseley and [DL Hassan] Ridgeway back in practice soon, in the next couple days or by Minnesota. That’s about it. Go ahead guys.”

What was Hassan Ridgeway’s injury?

“Ridgeway had a quad strain the first week of practice.”

So the day after, when you look at the film what did you think about QB Trey Lance’s decision making and how he executed what you wanted him to do?

“Pretty similar to I think what I said last night, he did a good job. Didn’t have any bad plays, was consistent in what he did and it was a good first outing for him.”

How about your guards? Specifically, OL Aaron Banks and OL Spencer Burford, how they looked and what you want to see out of them in Minnesota?

“We have to see why they’re in the position that they are, having the opportunity to be our starters. It was good to play them a bunch, because they both need it. We kept Burford in there a little longer because he’s a little less experienced and they need these three games, but I thought they showed out there why we believe in them and I’m real excited about them. Hopefully they’ll get better each week here up to Week 1.”

After looking at the tape, what did you see from CB Sam Womack III out there?

“We felt him out there with those picks and I thought he did a real good job in his coverage too. His pick over the middle, I thought was the best, just the coverage that he had on it. The second one just for him to keep fighting and be able to come down with that or I think that was the first one, but he had a good first outing. Still has to clean some stuff up and continue improving in the run game and some pass game stuff, but he had a good first day.”

Also, it seemed to take a little while for your run game to get going. What did you see from your running backs that were out there last night? RB Trey Sermon said he’s seeing holes a little bit better, but he didn’t get going quite well.

“Yeah, I was real happy with Trey. There were things that we wanted him to improve on from last year. He’s shown that in training camp every single day that he’s got the opportunity to, and I thought he did the same thing last night. I didn’t think he had any really good looks that he should have got more on. But he didn’t hesitate. He hit the whole hard and I thought he did a real good job with his opportunities. And besides that, the rest of the stuff, we have to clean some stuff up. We had a few guys off here and there and a couple mistakes, but overall, I thought the guys did a decent job.”

How is DL Arik Armstead coming along in his return from that injury?

“He’s coming along. I bet you he could go. I bet you he’d be all right this week if we really wanted to push it. We’ll watch him here the next couple days. And I think we’re a little more hesitant for his first practices back to be against another team, to be against Minnesota. So the odds are we’ll wait on him, but he’s doing a good job.”

What is your plan heading into Minnesota? You talked about balancing travel and the number of games you have in the next couple weeks, so what is your plan for practice in these next two days?

“We’ve got a number of guys who haven’t really practiced since Wednesday. We just did a walk-through Thursday and a number of guys didn’t play in that game Friday, so we really want to generate a practice tomorrow. However, a few guys got hurt in the game, so when you have starters who didn’t play in that game, but then the backups went in and played a lot and some are a little banged up, it makes it a little tough for, we can’t really accomplish everything we want to do, but we’re going to sit here, see how the guys are when they come in tomorrow, we’ll tally up all their reps and we’ll try to generate some type of practice for the guys who haven’t got it in a little bit.”

All due respect to K Robbie Gould, but why is he doing kickoffs instead of P Mitch Wishnowsky?

“We went that direction last year and we thought he did a much better job with it. I think it allowed Mitch’s leg to stay fresh all year. We thought just asking him to do that took a little bit from him and just wore him down a little bit on his punts as the year went. So we asked Robbie to take on that challenge last year and he did a really good job with it to where we felt that it didn’t take back from anything and it also helped Mitch do better in the punt game.”

And speaking of special teams, what happened on that RB JaMycal Hasty play? Did he not know the rule or did he just think about it at the time?

“No, I think there’s a fine line that, yeah, it doesn’t look great, but there’s 11 guys sprinting down at you, that ball’s right there on the sideline. Hell yeah, you want it to bounce out of bounds so we get a much bigger gain or you want him to get out of bounce and touch the ball from there, so we can get that. But the fear is always that it ends up staying in bounds and you hesitate a little bit on it and then those guys show up a lot quicker than you’re anticipating. So obviously, he’d like to have it over, but he just, I think was too unsure if it was going to go out or not.”