Head Coach Kyle Shanahan Press Conference

Head Coach Kyle Shanahan

Press Conference – August 25, 2024

San Francisco 49ers

Opening comments:

“Injuries from the game, [DL] Yetur [Gross-Matos] has a knee, he’ll be week-to-week. [DL] Leonard Floyd also with a knee, he’s day-to-day. And [LB] Dee Winters from the game, also had an ankle. That’s it from last night, or two nights ago.”

How long do you expect Dee Winters to be out, if at all?

“I’m not sure. We’re waiting for an MRI back. With it being Sunday, we don’t have the MRI yet. Probably have a better idea tomorrow.”

With Yetur, is that a situation where he could go on IR to open the season?

“I would not think so, with it just being week-to-week. We’ll see how this week goes and hopefully he’ll have a chance to get back in practice next week for Week One. But no, they haven’t mentioned anything about IR.”

And just as far as you guys are sifting through what you want to do with the roster, where do you kind of find your most difficult challenges are in getting set that first 53?

“It’s just connecting all the positions. You have the unknowns with [WR Brandon Aiyuk] B.A. and [T] Trent [Williams] right now. And then we have a lot of good competition at a number of positions, whether to go light in certain places, heavier than some others. Definitely don’t want to get any specifics though, because that’s what all 32 teams are doing right now, watching everyone’s rosters, trying to listen to everything and figure out which guys they can get.”

Can you say if you think S Talanoa Hufanga and or WR Ricky Pearsall will be practicing this week?

“Ricky will be practicing tomorrow. And then Huf, we’ll have to make a decision on him before Wednesday’s practice.”

When you say make a decision, meaning possibly start him on PUP?

“Yes.”

Have you decided on your backup quarterback rotation and where that stands?

“No, we haven’t decided. We haven’t told them yet, so still working through that.”

As far as depth at defensive end, obviously you’ve got DL Robert Beal Jr. there, but who else in that group has stepped up and who might be able to kind of fill in a spot if Gross-Matos is out for a little while?

“I think you’ll see when we decide on the 53. That sounds like a question the other 31 teams are trying to get you to ask me. Sorry man, but it is too hard to talk about the specifics like that right now.”

When you went back and looked at the film of the Vegas game, what did you think of how RB Isaac Guerendo played? Just in terms of, as a running back, besides how electric he was as a returner.

“I thought he did a real good job, especially since it was the first day he had shoulder pads on since the Senior Bowl. He got hurt our first day of practice and then the two practices we had before the Raiders week were unpadded practices. So for him to go that long without putting pads on, I really liked how he ran. He tried to break tackles, never eased up on contact, tried to run through it, hit the holes well and had a real good first game.”

How much have you watched the Jets during the preseason or are you just starting to kind of break them down now?

“I mean, that’s usually when we have free time. It’s a little less of what they do in the preseason and more of their 17 games from last year. That’s more the stuff you watch. We’ll flip on the preseason, but they don’t play a lot of guys. They kind of keep the same scheme and whatever they’re going to change they usually hide. That’s what most teams do. So we’ve invested most of our time in last year, but we’ll be covering those three games, we already have and we’ll continue to do it.”

Do they seem to have the same personality as they’ve had in the past scheme-wise?
“Yes. It’s very similar to ours in what they do with [New York Jets head coach] Robert [Saleh] being there and same type of front style with their D-Line coach coming from here also and got a lot of familiarity with [New York Jets defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich] Brick who is one of my favorite coaches in the league, you know, I was with him in Atlanta. So some very similar stuff defensively.”

With your guys’ roster situation and some positions being deeper than others, are you hearing from teams around the league or has there been talk with other teams about some trades prior to the cut down day?

“Yeah, there’s always talk now. I mean, guys everywhere are calling, and they do that usually a week before the final preseason game. But you never know really how real anyone is here until usually tomorrow. Not as much today I think, although the last games I think were finished yesterday. But you know, everyone tries to figure it out and is wanting to know who you’re keeping, who they can get, if they’re going to be cut, who they can trade for. But there’s a lot of talk. Nothing comes real until most likely tomorrow or sometimes the morning of.”

This may be an obvious question, but with S Malik Mustapha starting in Vegas is that, I mean, he’s got a real chance to be a season-opening starter depending on Talanoa, is that accurate?

“No. I mean that’s all a possibility, but [S George Odum] G.O., Odum, was going to start, he rolled his ankle in pregame and didn’t think it was that bad. He spatted it up and then we watched him run down on the first kickoff, we could see him hobbling a little bit. So right when we saw that, we just took him out of the game and said it wasn’t smart to play him, but he’s fine, he’s good now, but just what he did in pregame, we thought it was just a little risky for him to go out and fight through it.”

And also, TE Logan Thomas, what led to, I mean, kind of a weird thing where he is released and now he’s back. Can you just kind of shed some light on those transactions?
“Well yeah, Logan wasn’t a guy we wanted to let go of. He just had his injury and stuff. We had some other roster issues and we told him if we were able to get him back on before this went, as long as he got healthy we would, and we had a spot for him and I think he had some opportunities with other teams also, but he wanted to come back to here and we felt very fortunate for that because we definitely wanted him back.”

How did your offensive line look, mostly OL Dominick Puni in the last couple of games?

“I thought he’s done a good job in all three of his games. As we’ve talked about before, he got a hell of an opportunity with the guys in front of him going down and I believe he’s taken advantage of it and he’s gotten better throughout the camp and it’s carried over to these games.”

With his background playing left tackle at the University of Kansas, were you guys ever tempted to throw him in there for a rep or two in practice?

“I mean, we probably would’ve if he didn’t have to get at the starting guard position within those first couple days because just with [OL Spencer Burford] Spence going down so fast and then [OL Jon] Feliciano doing the same. So, we weren’t able to move him out there at those spots. But we didn’t draft him thinking we would put him there, but we know he has the skillset to get us out of a pinch and do that if he had to.”

Can you take us behind the scenes as far as your guys’ process as far as going about canvassing the entire league and trying to have an idea or guess of how teams will pare their rosters down? How do you guys split up that work?

“That’s our whole personnel department, with [director of player personnel] Tariq [Ahmad] and [director of player personnel] RJ [Gillen] and [director, scouting and football operations] Josh [Williams], they all are always on the phones having discussions with other teams, with other agents. That’s what they do full-time is study the rosters. Anyone outside of the coaching department and stuff, that’s what they’re looking around all the time. They’re studying our film. They always bring to us if they feel there’s someone out there that could be an upgrade, someone who could be first on the list in case of injuries. Things like that. But we’re always building lists and we’re always looking for ways to upgrade our team if there’s any way we think we can.”

Your other two rookie linemen, OL Jarrett Kingston and OL Drake Nugent, how would you evaluate what you saw from them in camp and preseason?

“Just like everything, I don’t want to get into too much. But they definitely had good camps and I think they both played in all three games. And even going back to Friday night, I thought Friday night was their best game. So they’ve been improved throughout it all.”

How much do you stress to your players as you’re sitting down over these next couple days with the conversations that, ‘hey, we had starters in the Super Bowl who didn’t join us until the season started.’ Just telling them that, ‘hey, this isn’t your last shot.’ What are those conversations like?

“It’s a huge thing. I always try to make a point of it. One of the things I say a lot is that, they talk about it being the final 53, but never in the history of football has the final 53 been the final 53. That’s just the final 53 on Tuesday at one o’clock, I think it is. But after that it’s always changing. And you’ve got 53 guys who you decide on then, you’ve got 16 on practice squad. That changes a ton throughout the year. We’ve had guys like [OL] Colton McKivitz on our practice squad who’s a starter now. [WR] Jauan Jennings, [LB Demetrius] Flannigan-Fowles. We’ve had a lot of guys. [WR] Chris Conley started that way last year, was on our active roster making big plays in the Super Bowl and the playoffs. So, the point is sticking around in this league and finding a way to do it. Even people don’t get into those situations, I always like to tell people that when we get in binds and you need to get people in the middle of the year, we’d always rather get a person that we know than just some random dude that we don’t. And so even the guys that there isn’t a spot on practice squad if they handle it here the right way and usually they can make it through camp that means that there’s something that they can bring. So even if you’re not on one of those 16, you always have a chance with us in the future.”