Head Coach Kyle Shanahan Press Conference

Head Coach Kyle Shanahan

Press Conference – August 14, 2025

San Francisco 49ers

Any new injuries? DL Nick Bosa?

“With Bosa, neck soreness. Hopefully he’ll be back next week.”

What about S Jason Pinnock?

“You know him and [CB] Tre Brown both have heel situations. They both almost went today but didn’t go. So, hopefully they can Saturday.”

What happened to OL Ben Bartch?

“I’ll help you guys out [laugh]. All right, Bosa, hopefully next week we got Tre Brown, Pinnock, heel. I’m not going to say the old ones that you guys already know. Bartch got his elbow. He’ll be out this week. [CB] Upton Stout, you guys knew that, still his calf. [WR] Jordan Watkins, you guys got the high ankle sprain. [DL] Robert Beal [Jr.], abductor.”

During practice, DL C.J. West went down.

“C.J. West hyperextended his knee. We think it’s going to be all right, but it looks like what happened to [DL] Mykel [Williams] last week, but his ACL and everything checked out so far, so hopefully we’ll be lucky.”

From what you saw, how did practice go?

“I was happy with the guys. I’m excited to see the film. You know, it was a huge challenge today, just having 20 guys out and how many ever we have on PUP and stuff. So, it was a challenge to get through that. I thought we needed it, and I was proud of the guys. A number of positions had to step up, especially with DB, d-line, wide out. But I thought we competed hard out there. I thought we did a good job and excited to have the tape for these guys.”

Did you notice improvements from a week ago or does that register right away?

“Not really. I mean it is a different team we’re going against, different situation. We’re in a different spot than we were last week. I try my hardest not to measure ourselves up to other people in these, I just like different schemes and different players to go against. It’s more about us continuing to get our guys the best they can be, and I think it helps to go against some different techniques and style to do that. So that’s why I like this.

Did QB Brock Purdy get enough work today to where you won’t play him on Saturday or will he go for a series or two?

“I’d like Brock to play, we’ll see how it goes. I haven’t decided anything for sure yet. We’ll watch this tape, I planned on getting these starters going. There might be a couple guys I rest, but there’s not a lot of, especially on the defense, healthy starters as it is. But I’ll figure that out here in the next 24 hours. But planning on some starters to play.”

When you say like going up against different guys, like OL Colton McKivitz going up Las Vegas Raiders DE Maxx Crosby a lot, could you see anything?

“In the team periods, I mean you can feel Maxx every play, but I don’t really sit and isolate there, but you can feel him every play. I know he got a couple of them, but I think Colton got a couple too. It’s fun to watch the one-on-ones when we do that stuff. I don’t know how many reps we got of it today down numbers, but that’s usually my favorite thing when it comes to those types of things or the one-on-ones because that’s really when you get a good just isolate on those guys. But I don’t know, I wasn’t over there for that.”

You had expressed hope, obviously, that OL Andre Dillard could maybe be the answer at swing tackle. Will you have to look outside at this point without him?

“Oh yeah. I mean we’re always looking outside, but if there were a lot of guys outside, they wouldn’t be outside. They would be somewhere, so I was excited to get [OL Andre] Dillard in the mix to compete with that. But we still got [OL Spencer] Spence [Burford] going. We still got [OL Austen] Pleasants going, so we’ve got guys competing for that spot. Would’ve been nice to have him but he got a rough injury and is not going to be available for a little bit.”

So, it was tied to what he was dealing with before?

“Yeah. Same thing as before.”

What is OL Connor Colby showing you?

“I think he’s getting better each week. You know, when you get these guys in at first you try not to judge them too hard because it takes a while. But the cool thing about o-lineman, is they just gradually get better each day, they kind of learn what we’re asking. It’s always different techniques. You never have a guy come out college who is going have to run as much as we ask him to as o-line. So, that always takes a number of days, sometimes a number of years. But I think he’s improved a lot here in these last couple weeks. Saw he got a high PFF grade, so I know you guys are on top of him. But I don’t think it was too off.”

He’s not a secret anymore.

“No he’s not a secret [laughs].”

When we talked to offensive line coach Chris Foerster about him a couple weeks ago, he said that he was pleasantly surprised by where he was at in pass protection relative to, like Iowa didn’t pass as much, right?

“Yeah, I would agree with that. You don’t get to see a lot of that on Iowa tape and just his size and stuff. He has an advantage with his size being in front of people, and his feet and stuff have been able to do it too. So, he’s catching up in the run game, but he’s had more of an advantage in the pass game so far.”

I know you joke but does the PFF grade match up to the 49ers grade?

“I don’t know. I don’t really know their grade. I just know they tell me when they have a high grade. So, I know who you guys are going to ask about [laugh].”

So, I’m saying did he grade out well?

“Yeah, I thought he played well. Yeah, he did. He did well, so did [OL] Drew Moss. They’re getting more accurate.”

It seemed like the Raiders were doing their share of antagonizing and you guys were sort of in control and sustaining that with the laundry list of injuries. Was there a message to hey, let’s try to keep things in control with these joint practices?

“Yeah, there’s a huge message. We had an idea where we would walk into, but it’s the same as the game. Like I have no problem with people fighting. I have a problem with you hurting your football team and losing football games. We don’t like people to fight on game day because one, it’s a 15-yard penalty. We like explosives, they’re hard to get by. We don’t like to just give them people, and you get ejected. It’s a lot harder to play with 45 and 46. Today I looked at it even stronger. I mean we are out here missing 20 guys. We have some positions that don’t really have enough to go. I looked at it as if, if you get punched and you throw a punch back and told the guys, it shows how mentally weak you are. So, all you’re going to do is leave five guys left to do the whole practice just because you couldn’t handle getting a head in your face mask, letting that hurt someone’s hand. So, I thought it was important to truly show how tough you are by no one throwing a punch, and what I saw the guys handled that because we were able to keep them all out there.”

T Trent Williams didn’t practice in the two joint practices. Is that because he doesn’t need to compete in joint practices, or is it anything to do with getting OL Spencer Burford as much work as possible?

“No, it’s more about Trent. Starting to have new plus 36-year-old rules for certain people. Yeah, his plus 36 might be a little different than our punter and long snappers but you know, Trent’s playing at a very high level, Trent’s in as good as shape. I think he’s a lot further along right now than he was last year. But we love where Trent’s at. You only have so many bull rushes, so many everything you have in you once you get to a certain age, and when you put a guy out there like Trent, I mean everyone wants to measure themselves up against him. So, I’ve been in joint practices with Trent, and it’s a little different for him just going against people. So would’ve taken him out of that and be a little bit smarter with him.”

Do you think RB Christian McCaffrey and TE George Kittle are ready for the regular season?

“Yeah, I do. You always want to keep working and stuff, but it’s such a fine line. Like those guys, they’re ready physically when it starts, but they know they got to get through camp and stuff so their bodies can take it throughout the whole year. It’s tough with the way those guys play on Sunday, they can always throughout the year get a lot of work on Wednesday and Thursday. So, if you don’t get that work now, sometimes you never can catch it back up. The problem is stretching it all out. That’s why we got to be smart with those guys. That’s why those guys do get some vet days. It’s kind of naturally happened with these scrimmages because we’ve had two on one off, then we have to travel, we have tomorrow off, and then we’ll see how the game goes. I haven’t decided with all those guys yet, but there’s not a lot of time in the game either.”

With Christian coming off last year’s injuries, did you check in on him during camp or you can just tell by how he’s practicing?

“Yeah, I mean I’m around Christian a lot, so I talk to him a lot. Talk to the trainers a lot, and Christian’s very neurotic about his body, so you know he’s on top of all that stuff. But I mean last year was the first training camp he missed with us. Missing training camp isn’t always the best way to; it’s definitely not the best way to keep you healthy. But getting hurt in training camp also is a problem too. So that’s kind of the miserable decisions I have every single day.”

Christian seems to be moving really well to the naked eye. Is the GPS tracker saying that it’s the same?

“Yeah, I think he had like 25 yesterday or something like that. Trying to make Christian happy. He’s doing awesome. He’s as fast as he’s been, as quick, as strong. He’s Christian McCaffrey.”

George and Brock had really nice chemistry last year, and they spent a lot of off-time together. Do you see it even raise their chemistry together?

“Yeah, I’ve noticed Brock had a couple more Bud Lights lately. I think that’s from Kittle. I’m just joking. Brock’s not like that, but I think hanging out with Kittle’s awesome, they got a lot more work in. But it’s not necessarily stuff you see on the field, it’s just cool to see guys get closer and just become more comfortable with each other. I mean we’ve been here now I think three years, four years together and you know, spend a lot of time with people like that in your whole life. So hopefully, it’ll be four more.”

You mentioned before the risk/reward of deciding which starters play. How do you balance that given how many injuries went down on the depth that you have and how does that change the competition?

“Well, the fact that so many guys are hurt, it kind of takes the decision process out for me. I think there are three healthy starters on defense right now, so I have to decide on those three guys. But it does put a lot more pressure on the threes. The twos become the ones, the threes become the twos, and we don’t really have threes right now. I look at it all and how much time you’re getting in the next few weeks, and I’d like to get a lot of work for as many guys as I can on Saturday. So, we’re going to try to treat the following week like a normal week where we take a Monday and Tuesday off, try to have a normal Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday schedule. Which will be one off because it’s a Saturday game, but I’m trying to do as best as we can. With guys who miss all of Saturday who don’t work on Friday, then the whole team has Sunday and Monday off. Now all a sudden you’ve had a guy rest for too many days, and it becomes unsafe to bring him back. So, we got to figure out how to balance it out.”

The defensive line, you have many guys that are probably going to make the roster that aren’t available right now. It’s not just the defensive line, but are you ever oh, here we go again. Do you ever get those feelings?

“Yeah, because I mean that’s what we all get. That’s why we all don’t like training camp. We love football, we love practicing, but you know how valuable these players are to winning games. I think we had six d-linemen out there today. Two that I think we signed yesterday, two that we signed the week before, and two guys that I don’t really know. So, it’s a little bit different. It gives guys other opportunities, we can see more people. But yeah, this isn’t my first time going through it, so it’s kind of life of the coach. I accept it a little bit more but, it’s something we’re thinking about a lot. It’s a big deal, and hopefully we can fix it.”