Head Coach Kyle Shanahan Press Conference

Head Coach Kyle Shanahan

Press Conference – November 13, 2024

San Francisco 49ers

Opening comments:

“Injuries for practice today: [TE] George Kittle won’t practice, hamstring, [P] Mitch [Wishnowsky] won’t practice, back, [DL] Kevin Givens won’t, groin, [CB Charvarius] Mooney Ward, still personal, [DL] Nick Bosa, hip, won’t practice, [T] Trent Williams, ankle/rest, won’t practice, [WR Chris] Conley, hamstring, limited, [OL Jon] Feliciano, knee, limited, [RB Christian] McCaffrey, Achilles, limited. Go ahead.”

Does that mean that McCaffrey’s Achilles acted up after this game?

“No. Nope.”

This is part of the regular maintenance of it?

“Yep.”

CB Renardo Green is good to go?

“Yeah, good to go.”

What’s any latest on Charvarius, how he’s doing and when you would expect him back?

“I think he’s getting close, just talking to him. I don’t want to put a date on it because you never know if that could change or not. But he’s told us sooner than later and hopefully he’ll be in a good place to come back.”

How happy are you to get the deal done with DB Deommodore Lenoir?

“Oh, pumped. Something we tried to do in the offseason, didn’t get it done. They started working on it here a few weeks ago, and for them to finish it up yesterday, so pumped. Can’t say enough about Dmo. He’s exactly what we want as a Niner. His style of play, how good he’s become, and really just how much he loves football. He’s the same dude every day. I know we were pumped, the guys were pumped. It was huge.”

What do you think about just his journey because it was kind of up and down at the beginning and then where he’s come to now?

“Yeah, just, that first year he got thrown in early and had a tough mistake on one of the last plays of the game versus Green Bay, giving up a big last play that they could kick a field goal. I remember after that, I was talking to him about it this morning, lost his confidence a little bit after that. Just was down making a big mistake and really never got it back that year. But it was that OTAs, he was a different guy right away. And ever since that rookie year he has been a stud for us every year.”

Is he one of the most confident players on the team now?

“Yeah, I believe so. I think he, I don’t think there’s that much difference between him this year and last year. I thought he played at such a high level last year. I don’t think everyone talked about it as much. And he’s taken off right where he left off last year and only gotten better. And the way he’s been playing all year with his confidence, his physicality, he’s been one of our best.”

He had a really loud stop in the run game. What can you say about how well he’s kind of taken that nickel role, specifically for run fitting?

“He’s got the mindset to do all that. He’s got a mindset very similar to [Houston Texans S] Jimmie Ward’s. Just how he plays, how much he loves the physicality, how much he can cover. But he wants to play like a linebacker and really be a part of all that stuff. And he stuck out our first day of rookie camps when he got me fined, like a lot. Because he jammed people too hard and then put it on the internet. That was the first time I ever got mad at him, but I was really excited about it. Despite what it took away, my kids’ college tuition. But it showed we had the right type of dude and he’s always been like that. The fact that he can play nickel inside and play the way he does and play and cover guys outside, are the types of guys you want in the secondary and a special type of corner.”

Nick Bosa said he’s matured this year. He hasn’t had to pull him back out of brawls this year or like starting stuff up. Have you seen that maturity as well?

“I think so. I think Dmo’s always been a fighter. You can go back and hear the reports from college, some things that have happened in the practice field, couple in games. But I think he’s really realized that, and he’s ready to fight at any time, but you don’t need to fight on a football field. Can get as close as you can, but you’re always playing football and whatever he does before or after he’s not going to get a penalty for so he can deal with that.”

Have you reminded Dmo that, maybe with that new contract, that he should kick some your way?

“I will. My kids will.”

Do you see elements of him in Renardo Green? Are those two guys similar?

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, just the mindset we’re talking about. Renardo in his rookie year he has got that type. When we drafted Renardo, it’s one of my first notes on him, if I go back to my notes, is he’d rather hit you than get a pick. We want both, but we love guys who are wired that way. Not all corners are wired that way. You’ve got to be able to cover people, but if you can do both, that’s what makes a football team better.”

Does Renardo have more of a quiet confidence?

“Yeah. Yeah, he doesn’t talk that much. I think he doesn’t open up to everybody. But the longer he’s been here, like you get in a smaller room with him, you get one-on-one, he’ll talk. Just like Dmo. I didn’t think Dmo talked at all, and now it’s hard to not hear him. So guys change throughout everything. Rookies are always a little bit more quiet. I think that is his personality some, but all you’ve got to do is call him in your office and have a one-on-one with him and he doesn’t mind talking.”

How would you characterize the level of concern with Kittle and Bosa?

“Not too high. Bosa was able to get through it last week. Kittle, I’d expect to have him out there tomorrow. It’s just irritated. We’ll be smart today, but you never know how the week goes. But I feel pretty good about both of them.”

How about Wishnowsky? You guys brought in P Pat O’Donnell.

“Yeah, I am a little more concerned with that. Bothered him earlier in the year, pretty bad back to training camp. And it’s flared up here this last week. So we’ll see how this week goes, but that’s why we brought in another guy. Hopefully it’ll take a turn for the better here. But right now we have some concern.”

What did you guys like about O’Donnell? He’s obviously been around a while.

“We just, we work everybody out and he was the guy we felt that was the best out of the available options. He’s been around in the league for a while, he understands the timing of everything, he’s a really good holder. You bring in a good punter and he’s not as good of a holder, that’s a problem too because it affects the kicker a lot, how good those holders are. He’s always been great at that. And you always like guys who’ve been and done it before.”

With special teams as a whole, have you made any changes in terms of practice time or devoted meeting time to it, just in terms of trying to get that unit going to where you want it or will you in the coming weeks?

“Yeah it’s, we devote a lot of meeting time and a lot of practice time. We don’t double down on that, the time spent on it, because I feel like we do as much as we can. We have mixed a lot of guys in there. We do feel like guys have gotten better. But it only takes one mistake to cost somebody and it only takes one person. You look at the Seattle game that we had last time, if you go back and you watch all the film, I thought that was one of our chances to have our best special teams game of the year. We caused two turnovers, got both of them, only one counted with the replay stuff. But we had one missed tackle on a big kick return and then they had that second one and you just have those two plays and it can cost you a game. I do think guys are getting better and stuff, but we’ve got to make sure that we don’t make those dumb plays where we can cause a penalty, where we can cause a turnover and those are the things that we’ve really got to clean up.”

How difficult is that to, there’s only so much you can do, obviously you have 53 guys and a practice squad, but how difficult is it to try to just generate that improvement from within on something like that?

“It’s real difficult. You’ve got the choices you’ve got and as guys get, right when you get comfortable with somebody and, you start out the year playing a lot of young guys and you think they’ll get better as the year goes and then some of your vets get hurt and now those young guys are starters. And so, that bumps other guys up and it hurts their development when they try to do both because they needed a lot more rep. But as they get more pressure on them for offense and defense, it’s tough. And you’ve got guys like, even like [RB] Jordan Mason, he was one of our best special teams players last year and he’s been our starting running back for eight of the games until last week. So all that stuff is a trickle-down effect. You try to get practice squad guys up who you think can help, but they better, one guy gets hurt and they don’t know a position, that can cost you a game too. So all that, that’s challenges everyone has with special teams. You also aren’t going to do a bunch of live stuff and full field stuff, because you’ll, you might get a little bit better but you’ll hurt your team before you’ve even started. So it’s stuff you just constantly harp on, constantly talk about. We get some of the mistakes we made earlier in the year, which puts all eyes on it and that’s why each little one we do now it only builds the pressure on those guys. But I do like how they’re kind of all committed to fix it and they’re all working real hard. But we’ve got to do better.”

Christian came back this week and you guys got a bunch of explosives. Is it cause-and-effect or what did the film show?

“I don’t think, I’m not even sure. I could be wrong, I’m sure you’re right. I feel like we had less explosives than usual. Was I wrong?”

Every weapon on the team had one explosive.

“Oh, well I think that stuff helps. Anytime you have really good players out there, all those guys are going to do good until they try to take one away and whenever you try to take one away, it helps out somebody else. And the better the player is, the more space it helps for other people. And if it isn’t helping other people, then it’s the more space that player has. So, the more great players you can have out there, the better looks everyone’s going to have.”

At halftime, FOX Sports reporter Erin Andrews said she had talked to you and you said you actually wanted to play Christian more in the first half, but because it was hot, you didn’t want to kill him. How much more did you want to play him?

“I didn’t exactly know the numbers. I think he, whatever the four plays he wasn’t in. No, I, when I’m sprinting off the field and I have like eight minutes to go in and pee, come up with eight plays to talk to the offense, get all the tendencies, give a huge rah-rah speech to get us back out for a second half, my thoughts aren’t always there when I’m running and talking to someone. That’s why I hate when they put me on TV, I’m not the most social at those times and I’d rather go in there and work on my job. But yeah, I don’t, I’m sure I did say that. I guarantee I did if Erin said it, but I didn’t know the numbers at the time either. I thought we had him out for a couple drives. We did take him out a couple times, but the numbers weren’t as, it felt like a hundred plays he was out. But I think it was only like four or five.”

The way K Jake Moody bounced back from three misses and finish it off right, did you talk to guys about just turning negatives into a positive situation?

“Yeah, always. That’s stuff we talk about all the time. No one has a perfect game, ever, that I’ve seen. I mean kickers, I guess, can because you’re just judged on your attempts. But I mean just most football players, there are so many highs and lows that go in a game. Sometimes it could be in front of everybody, which usually is a quarterback or a missed tackle, a corner getting beat on something, a receiver dropping a ball, a penalty. But all that stuff’s going to happen. It’s about wiping it out and going to the next play, good or bad. I’ve had so many guys have such a good, I’ve been around guys who, it’s the opposite too. You’re unbelievable for three quarters, you do all this good stuff, you’re feeling good, great about yourself and then you don’t look the ball in and then you drop it on a crucial play in the fourth. And that’s all anyone remembers and that’s all the team remembers, because that’s one that looks like it costs the game. So everything is about not being too high or too low and just staying even keel and worrying about whatever happened once you get in the locker room and watch the tape.”

I tragically missed the Monday conference call, but I had a follow up for you. You said LS Taybor Pepper overreacted, probably, misreading the situation. Did WR Deebo Samuel Sr. also overreact?

“Yeah. You can’t throw whatever type of punch that was, you can’t do that. Deebo, where Taybor overreacted is, what I was saying is, Deebo wasn’t saying anything bad to the kicker. And Taybor was overprotective of the kicker, which I like his intentions, but he misinterpreted it and he got too close to Deebo, which was irritating to Deebo. And there were other ways he could have got him out of his face instead of the way he did, but there was nothing between Deebo and Jake. And to watch him kind of graze Pepper and fall into Jake and it just looked like that he’s punching Jake because he missed a field goal, that could have been avoided. I didn’t mind at all what Deebo said to Jake and Jake didn’t mind it either. But regardless of what happens, you don’t throw a punch. And you see what happens when that happens.”

DL Evan Anderson had a big tackle at the end of the game. Are you guys getting more out of him than you would’ve expected from an undrafted rookie?

“Well yeah, when you have an undrafted rookie you hope that you don’t have to put him in too much. But it’s just like everything, when there’s injuries, it’s next man up. And you hope you don’t have too many so you don’t have to keep going outside the building. He showed some good things in training camp. We hoped he didn’t have to get in too fast, but once guys got hurt, he was the next man up. Each game he has gotten better in. We were excited about him to begin, but you never know where a guy’s going to go until he gets his op and he’s gotten better each week. I thought last week he played a hell of a game. That play at the end was great. We called a stunt on it, which there was some movement and I thought it was a good call by [defensive coordinator] Nick [Sorensen] and he made the play by missing two and get him back there and made some good plays in the last game too. So we’ve been real happy with them. We’ve needed him to step it up like this because with the injuries it’s hard to be successful if those guys don’t come in and at least do their job and then hopefully as they do their job they get better.”

I don’t think CB Rock Ya-Sin had taken a defensive snap all year until he gets in the field and there’s a penalty, but then he makes a play at the end. What does that say about a guy to be ready after all that time?

“No, I can’t say enough good things about Rock. Rock is such a football player. He’s always locked in. He’s ready to go, never pouts if he doesn’t get an opportunity. When he does, he looks like he’s been in there all game. Just the question you guys were saying earlier about the mental toughness of the kicker and things like that. That’s what I mean by everybody. He had a big penalty a few plays before that, we had four on that drive and then the final third down goes to him one-on-one. If you’re worrying about your penalty earlier, there’s no way he covers him on that. No one was underneath him. He was on his back and he still had to attack him and get his hand in there and almost caused a pick. So there was a lot of guys who made some mistakes at times and especially in that fourth quarter, from the kicker, to the defense, to [QB] Brock [Purdy], to everyone, made some big plays to get us back and win that.”