Head Coach Kyle Shanahan Press Conference

Head Coach Kyle Shanahan

Press Conference – November 8, 2021

San Francisco 49ers

Opening Comments:

“Alright guys, injuries from the game, [T Mike] McGlinchey had a quad tear, which I’m sure you guys heard. He’ll require surgery, done for the year. [WR Mohamed] Sanu [Sr.] had a knee sprain. He’s going to be out for a while. We’re still evaluating exactly what it is but I don’t have that information yet. But it won’t be anytime soon. [S] Tavon Wilson had a foot. He also will be out for a while, most likely IR. He’s still undergoing tests to see exactly what it is. [CB] Josh Norman had a rib, he’ll be limited this week. [CB] Dre Kirkpatrick had an ankle sprain, he’s day-to-day. Go ahead guys.”

What’s the plan at right tackle moving forward now that McGlinchey is out of the season?

“You guys saw [OL Tom] Compton there. You guys have seen [OL] Jaylon Moore play. We’ll see how we rep it this week, but probably won’t announce that either until Sunday or unless someone’s confirmed and I feel better on Wednesday or Thursday.”

Does OL Daniel Brunskill factor into the decision-making at all? Just given his background at tackle.

“He’s definitely an option, so you’ve got a number of options in that way, so we can see with that. But the job will probably go to those other guys.”

Do you have an idea of how long DL Dee Ford is expected to be out? Is it a season-ending injury for him?

“It’s the same thing as usual guys. Just dealing with that back. We’re not sure. If it lingers very long, we’ll probably go to short time short-term IR, but we haven’t decided that yet. He is on short-term IR, we just don’t know whether he’ll be able to be back in three weeks. It’s day-to-day with that stuff. So we know it’s at least three games, but we’ll wait and see after that.”

A couple other injury questions. Have you gotten any update on WR Jalen Hurd? Has he had any follow up procedures? Have you gotten any kind of timeframe on him? Is he out for the season? What’s his status?

“I don’t think we’ve made any announcements or deciding for sure, but I’m not expecting him to come back this year.”

And then what about DB Tarvarius Moore? Is it the same thing with him?

“He’s got an outside chance. But that has to be, I haven’t asked about him in a while. I know they said outside chance of December, but I haven’t asked about him recently.”

Now that you’ve had time to watch the film and fully kind of digest what happened yesterday. Are your feelings pretty much the same now as they were in the immediate aftermath of that game?

“Yeah, I was pretty worked up last night, for obvious reasons. Very disappointed there during the game, disappointed watching the film. I know that we can play a lot better football. That’s for sure. I know we’re a 3-5 team right now. I believe that we should be a better team than that record and I know that starts with me. Just going through the film, it was frustrating, a lot of those explosives we gave up on defense going back. Going back through all the runs and stuff and there’s three in particular that I think we gave up 69 yards on three runs. Two that got to the corners and they’ve got to make those tackles and one we got out of a gap in a zone read they hit right up the middle for about 30. Take away those three runs and we held them 2.5 a carry on 35 carries, but those three runs hurt us. And looking at those third-and-longs, the third-and-18 where [LB] Azeez [Al-Shaair] missed that tackle to get them off the field and then followed up by that third-and-nine, getting that unfortunate personal foul called that they called on [DL Arik] Armstead and then hit us with a double pass the next play. Got us really behind the eight ball and our offense had an opportunity, I believe, to score a lot of points and we didn’t get that done. Turning it over three times to their zero, you would have told me they got 40 runs. Turned it over zero times. We turned it over three times and only got 11. I think that says a lot.”

In regards to Josh Norman, aside from his injury status, what’s his situation with you? Did you guys talk about his taunting penalty? And did you consider cutting ties with him?

“No, actually I did not want him to be benched the whole game for that reason. I wanted him out of there to cool it down, so I was totally cool with that. We came back into the third quarter and I noticed Dre was still out there. I asked if that was because it was the same thing and they just kept going with Dre, which I’m okay with them making that decision. Josh has made some mistakes and stuff this year. I also like that he’s caused some turnovers and I like the way that he plays, but they wanted to roll with Dre. And I fully supported that for that second half.”

With your rookie class, I don’t know if you had any like set expectations with how much you want them to play, obviously, until you’ve got to seem them. But are you frustrated at all that you’re not getting more, particularly from the guys that you took the first couple of days?

“We had a feeling it was going to be that with our quarterback. Are you talking about all the draft picks?”

Yeah, particularly the guys in the second and third round.

“Yeah. We had a feeling with that our quarterback. We knew we drafted a guard in the second round thinking he’d have a chance to push Brunskill and [OL] Laken [Tomlinson]. Our biggest thing with all those positions, whether it was running back, third, corner in the third and the fifth, and guard in the second, those are all positions we were very thin at. Now, we had guys there that were starters. We weren’t drafted a hole to replace the starter, whether it was at guard or whether it was that corner or whether it was that back. I felt good with [RB] Raheem Mostert and [RB] Jeff Wilson [Jr.] as our starting backs, but we knew we needed some depth. I felt very good about [CB Jason] Verrett, [CB Emmanuel] Moseley and [CB] K’Waun [Williams] as our starting three corners. But we also knew we needed some depth behind them for injury and for going into next year, especially with the one-year deal those guys are on. And we had to start getting some youth in here. [OL Aaron] Banks, we thought had the best chance to compete to maybe win one of those jobs over the off season, but he didn’t get that. He wasn’t there in training camp, started getting his work in Week 1 and has been behind the eight ball. I think he’s had a couple good weeks here. His best two weeks lately and he’s starting to push him a little bit, but when that time is right for him and our team, we’ll make that move. When you look at the running back, yeah, [RB] Trey Sermon. We didn’t bring him here to come and start at running back. We needed to add some depths and unfortunately, we lost our two starting running backs within two plays of the first play of the year. And after that, I wouldn’t say it’s anything against Trey Sermon, but we felt better with [RB] Elijah [Mitchell]. Elijah had a strong camp, ended up beating Trey out and that’s why he got that role. Trey got some opportunities when other people got injured. But right now, Jeff Wilson’s back healthy and Elijah is healthy and those are our two starting backs right now with Trey being third and unfortunately, Hasty’s been our third down back and done the stuff in the pass game. So, he’s kind of been the odd man out with that, which is tough on him. It doesn’t mean that we don’t believe in him. He’s just not ahead of those other guys right now in terms of running the ball on first and second down. And when you look at our corners, the third-round pick, the fifth-round pick, we weren’t bringing any of them here to, we felt, start. We were hoping that they could add some depth and be guys who could play on our team and possibly do that next year. Unfortunately, having some injuries that we had early, we needed them earlier than we thought we would. And unfortunately, they weren’t fully ready for it. And yeah, I wish they were. But the third-round pick and the fifth-round pick, they weren’t, and that’s why we’ve gone with veterans instead of them. Trying to get them some time to get to where they need to be.”

Just to clarify with Jalen Hurd, is the reason he’s not going to be available for the rest of the season due to his knee injury?

“Yes. Yeah. We tried to give him some rest because things keep happening and it’s not getting better. We have all these timelines on it and we’re not meeting those deadlines, so it’s not healing the way that we want. I don’t know for sure, but just looking at how it’s gone, I don’t think it’s going to heal fast enough this year for him to help us.”

What is the team’s routine before home games? Does the team eat dinner together? Does it sleep at a hotel together? Do they have a breakfast together? And are these details something you’re examining during this losing streak at home?

“We do the same routine at home that we do on the road. You always go to a hotel, you have the same meeting time, same everything. So, there’s no change.”

Going back to McGlinchey, what kind of season was he having coming off of a year last year that I know he felt like could’ve been better and I’m sure you felt like he could have been better too. How did he bounce back this year?

“I thought Mike was doing a hell of a job coming off his last year. We saw some really good things from Mike his first two years. I think he knows, and we all know, he had a setback in his third season last year. Struggled at times and he’s put in the work in the off season. I thought he’s had a much better year, getting back to playing more how he did in his second year. And it was unfortunate. I thought that he’s been getting better each week and having a good year and playing like the right tackle we need him to play like and I think he was going to continue to get better too as the year went on. Unfortunately, though he had that injury and he’ll heal up and hopefully this will make him better for next year.”

Now that WR Odell Beckham Jr. is on the waiver wire, will you guys submit a claim on him, even though it’s going to be maybe difficult financial-wise, if you guys got to move some money around?

“Yeah, for that reason, we won’t be able to put a claim on him. Just for the financial reasons.”

How did WR Deebo Samuel emerge from this game? Did his calf get worse? The same? What’s the status?

“They gave me no feedback on him getting worse or anything today. So, to me, I’m assuming that he got out fine and hopefully it’ll be better for him in practice this week so he can get some practice. When he does that, it always helps him more for the games.”

As you know, there’s plenty of week-to-week hysteria in the NFL and sometimes it’s warranted and sometimes it’s overblown. I think just the manner in which you guys lost to the Cardinals, given some of the players that they were missing has conspired questions about the direction of the franchise and where this is headed. What would you say to those that are in hysterical mode?

“That’s the NFL. When you play like that, regardless of who they had out there. I expect that. That’s what you always get. That’s what you deserve. Fans want us to play well. They want us to win, whether we’re at home or away, especially at home. It’s been too long. We went into that game feeling very confident. I was very surprised on how the game went. I think our fans were too and I know they’re disappointed and I expect them to be. All we can do about that is work our butts off to get better and try to correct that next week at home at Levi’s Stadium again, verse the Rams.”

You mentioned it’s hard to win when you only run 11 times and turn the ball over three times. In retrospect, would you have liked to call more runs early, say in the first quarter when the game was closer?

“No, not in the first quarter, at all. They put six D-Linemen on the field, I thought we did what we needed to do. You’ve just got to be able to get it done and we didn’t. I think the first drive, we were doing it, going right down there. We ended up having a drop on a seam, which led to a third-and-long that we didn’t get. The next one, I think, we fumbled it on the first play after an explosive pass. Third one, I think we got down there and fumbled again inside-the-10 on an explosive pass. And those are things that I think you need to do. If you want to run it verse that stuff, you’re going to be in third-and-12. So there’s one way to get them out of it. And that’s to take advantage of what they’re giving, which I thought we did, and we did some good things on it. But you’ve got to do it all the way until you cross the goal line if you want to get rewarded for it. And that’s tough to do when you fumble it.”

Was there anything that you think you could have done better in this game or was it just a failure of execution?

“Failure of execution starts with me. When plays don’t work, no matter how it happens, it starts with the coaches. There’s tons of things that I can do better, so don’t get misinterpreted by that at all because that’s not even close to what I’m saying. Whether you’re running the ball or whether you’re throwing the ball, coaching your guys to execute a play, starts with coaching and then it leads to playing. So that goes hand in hand.”

A lot of games this season, you guys have started slow and I don’t remember– three or four games you haven’t scored until the last kind of minute of the second quarter. Did that inspire the decision to go into hurry up mode, the two-minute offense to start the game yesterday?

“No, that had to do with what they were playing and we wanted to keep them in it so they couldn’t substitute. So that’s just what you do, so people aren’t allowed to substitute. If you don’t substitute and you go to the line right away, they can’t change their personnel. So that’s why we kept doing that.”

Well there goes my theory. Thanks.

“You’re welcome.”

You changed the schedule today and I know coaches are usually creatures of the habit. Why did you mix or move some things around to meet with us earlier?

“Just because we have an eight-day week. I did everything with all the coaches today, but I usually have to do it with the players also. Today, it’s just with the coaches, so today’s kind of like a bonus day. I did my same routine with the coaches and then tomorrow I’ll be able to get ahead on the Rams, then just do a normal Monday with just players. Even though tomorrow is Tuesday, so having you guys wait until 3:30, usually it takes that long because I’m done with the coaches. Then I’ve got to go with the whole team and then the offense and the quarterbacks. And today, when I was done with the coaches. I didn’t want to sit here and wait till 3:30. I was going to try to move on and as long as you guys didn’t mind, I thought you guys would be alright with me moving it up an hour.”