Run Game Coordinator/Offensive Line Chris Foerster Press Conference

Run Game Coordinator/Offensive Line Chris Foerster

Press Conference – December 19, 2024

San Francisco 49ers

What have you gotten from OL Jaylon Moore? How do you feel about just how he has stepped in from the bench?

“Jaylon’s done a good job. Last week his hip started bothering him in warmups, so last week probably wasn’t as good a game as he’s had in some of the other two. He’s done a good job. There’s a lot of things he can still work on to be better. Starting consistently week after week becomes an issue as always. They start getting a book on you, things you’re doing that you need to fix and work on to get better. He held it his own last week and did a good job.”

I think maybe the first time he got real playing time was against Denver in 2021, at Denver. It didn’t go well. Naturally he’s gotten better since, but has it been leaps and bounds just as far as his growth?

“Well, I think it’s gotten better. Leaps and bounds is measured, but he’s doing a good job. He’s doing a good job. Has he proven to be an upper echelon starter in the National Football League? Probably not at this point. Is he in middle of the pack down to second? Where’s he rank one to 32 or 64 starters in the League at tackle? Where does he fit in that thing? I think he is somewhere in there. I don’t think he’s outside the realm of starting. He’s ideal as a swing guy, obviously because you have a guy that can step in and play at a starting level because he has done that through these years he’s played. Obviously he’s replacing a guy that’s been a really, really good player through the course of his career. But he’s done a good job. For a guy that everybody thought was going to play guard where we drafted him and he ended up playing tackle, I think it’s been good. And I don’t think you set the bar that low just because of where he came in the League, but I do think it’s been good. I wish it could be better. I do think there’s always a perspective of winning and losing and the losses, bad plays become magnified and in the wins, they’re somewhat glossed over sometimes. So as a whole, he’s been good. He still has room to improve.”

Can he still be a guard?

“That’s why we have him at tackle. I’m not saying he couldn’t, but he’s never had a chance to really compete at right tackle because he always backed up to [T] Trent [Williams] at the left and Trent at training camp has always been in and out. Moving him inside to play guard, we want him to compete when we’ve had some open guard spots. But the same thing, it’s hard to get him in there to be able to compete. What I saw in him when we got him here, I always think if a guy can play tackle, leave him at tackle and move him in if he can’t. That’s always been my philosophy, right or wrong. I think there is something as far as Jaylon the way he’s built, quickness, speed, that quick twitch, it’s a little bit more important sometimes inside than out. That explosiveness that Jaylon has, sometimes a little bit slower getting going than in some other guys. So I think what I’ve seen from him I think he’s more of a tackle than a guard.”

Do you envision OL Dominick Puni doing something like that, going from guard to tackle? What would he have to do to make that switch?

“Puni is outstanding. He’s doing a really good job at guard. I think he has a twitch that we saw some on tape in college and then has done better in the NFL with it. He’s a guy that, and we haven’t repped him out there yet, but he would be a get us out of a game at tackle guy if we had to because he does have the experience at it, could do it. I do think his overall, really range, sometimes range gets a guy to tackle. You can’t get out to the wider guys because of how you’re built and how you’re framed that way. That’s why I think you move to guard for him, I saw that as that’s a better spot for him than tackle. Although he could in a pinch play. In a pitch, he can play all five. He snapped the ball as well. I can’t remember which one, when we were down to only two guys or three, he would have to go in the game and snap the ball to get us out of it and have him out there taking snaps before practice.”

You talked a lot about the process of when somebody has a bad game or they face different challenges, you enjoy how that goes and how the offensive line evolves and faces that stuff throughout the year. It would seem like it’s not been a great year for that group compared to maybe years in the past. How would you say they face those challenges and evolved this season?

“I think we’re like the team. We’re not good enough. At six and eight, there’s no excuses, no hiding behind it. We’ve had our games and recently more than we would like. I would argue the case before we went to Green Bay, I thought that we were playing pretty good football and every player I could say on a grade sheet was grading out better, even though the record didn’t show it. Went to Green Bay, didn’t play well. Then we played a snow game, which was fun for us up front but it’s hard to measure that. And the games since then, Chicago was okay and then this game last week was not up to par. And so, we’ve had too many games of late that aren’t good enough and we need to continue to work to improve these last three. And I think we can. I think on a whole, regardless of what the record ends up being at the end of the season, we could have a more productive season this year. There’s just a lot of factors that go into this thing as to why it maybe doesn’t look as productive. But from a man on man, how some of these guys have improved and worked, it doesn’t always carry out. I’ve said before, my guys, we can grade out 100-percent across the board and we can get beat by three touchdowns. We can grade out, everybody grades losing football and we can win the game by three touchdowns because when the ball gets in a guy’s hands, we didn’t play well and you think about a couple plays in that game that we have back last week and we feel ‘wow, we played really well against that. Well, he didn’t run the ball as well, but you won the game and boom, you’re on the next week.’ Man for man there’s been a lot, there has been some improvement, but it’s not going to get noted. Everybody takes blame when you don’t win and we definitely carry our share of it.”

You guys have been struggling to run the ball it seems like at times since the Bye week. I asked Head Coach Kyle Shanahan why he said there were a number of reasons, but he said it’s not getting blocked clean enough up front. What do you see from a run game in the last month or so?

“Yeah, that was one of the reasons he said. Obviously there were more things he said in that quote. But yeah, obviously if you have gaping holes they’re going to run through them and if they’re not then they’re not going to so we have to block better. I’ve always said that since the first day we’ve talked in here. I’ve always said we have to do a better job if a run game’s going to be productive, but there’s going to be misses. There’s going to be misses in blocks by receivers, by the runners, tight ends, everybody plays a role. Just like pass protection, sacks are a stat that goes with the offensive line, but sacks are also a product of route running, quarterback decision making, other people blocking. There’s so many factors that go into it. So again, not deflecting, we have to do a better job. We’re a part of the run game not being as successful as it could have been the last few weeks. We’re also, that’s what we have to continue to work on to improve these last few weeks. And there’s changes. Runners are different. The linemen are different. There’s excuses. They’re just excuses. It’s not productive enough and we have to be better at it.”

Your coaches are so precise and detailed. When you’re talking about the grading, I’m just curious whether it was Trent or anybody else, have you ever had a guy that played almost a perfect game, or is there so much to critique that that never happened?

“I would say that I went through a season with [former OL] Jonathan Ogden. Jonathan Ogden that season graded, I’m not going to say percentage-wise, it doesn’t matter, but he had no sacks, no penalties, very few pressures or hurries on the quarterback, graded well above what I would say it’d be winning football. That was as close to a year, we were 13 and three. I’d have to go back and look here, it was 2006 in Baltimore, his second to last year. He had as good as a year as I’ve ever coached a player to have. When I was with [former OL] Randall McDaniel in Minnesota, these are the two Hall of Famers I’ve coached up to this point. But he was almost as good in one of my years in Minnesota. I wasn’t the line coach there, but I was an assistant and he had one of those seasons as well where you’re hard pressed to see him miss a block during a game.”

When you ask people about running backs coach Bobby Turner, they say he’s meticulous, the attention to detail is inevitably brought up quickly. I assume most coaches are meticulous and have attention to detail. Can you find an example of how he’s in the 99-percentile?

“Bobby’s a trip man. I love Bobby. Bobby literally takes nothing for granted. I mean, there’s sometimes I’m like, ‘I have said this so many times, I’m not going to say it again for the 16th week in a row. I’m done saying it. I’ve said it. You guys know it, we understand it.’ Bobby’s going to go to page one, start at page one, 1a.1a, and it’s going to go right down the list. His tip sheet, it’s going to be full, it’s going to be every single detail. It might be the most basic and fundamental thing, but he never lets it go by and he never misses one of them. Every little thing that’s going to be mentioned, he mentions, he covers them all. Obviously, he emphasizes what’s more important for the week, but Bobby just doesn’t get tired of the detail. He never gets tired of starting at 1a and just continuing to go down the list. I’m a little, I try to tailor it a little bit more. Like certain guys, I feel like for me personally, I lose them. Like God love [FB Kyle Juszczyk] Juice and [RB] Christian [McCaffrey] because they hear 1a again, I think those are two very, very smart players that probably have 1a down, but they hear it every week as well. I asked Christian one day about it and he could not have been more complimentary. He said ‘if a guy was going to last in the League as an undrafted free agent one year, with Bobby he might make it three. If he’s on another team, might make it three, but Bobby gets him six because they’ll know every facet of everything, and he makes sure they get it. And that’s what he’s so good at. He has, I don’t know if it’s patience, whatever that gene is inside of him. He’s in his seventies and he’s got as much energy around his place as anybody. I love the guy. But the detail, that’s what it is. We all do it. I mean, in everything we do, ‘I know how to do that’ and you move on, but Bobby covers it all.”

Working as close to Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel as you did through the years, I’m sure you have many stories to tell. What’s your perspective on how he’s fit into that role as the head guy?

“Yeah, Mike is a bad phone guy. He doesn’t respond a lot, so I haven’t talked a lot to Mike since he’s been down there. Once or twice a year maybe. My youngest son was living in South Florida for a while, and he was just trying to get the coaching, so Mike let him in the building to help out. And we had some communication along those lines. And I worked closely with Mike all the years I was with him. It sounds like from the guys that I know that work with him right now, he’s taken to the role very, very well. He’s done a good job with leadership. As everything with Mike, Mike grows into it. He’s a very smart guy. He’s able to adapt and do things. So, I think he’s adapted very well and grown in the role. And the best thing I’ve seen about Mike is he has been able to be himself. His quirky and his whatever the pressers are that you guys see, that’s Mike. If you got to know him at all here, Mike’s Mike and I’m really happy that he’s able to be himself. I really love the guy. He’s a great person, good guy and it seems like he’s handled the situation very well, but we don’t talk all the time about what he’s dealing with.

You’ve been coaching in this League a long time. You seem very calm with us, but all football coaches have a temper. Have you ever asked a guy to go into a game and he said no and how would you respond to that if it happened to you?

“I’ve never had a guy not go into the game. In fact, I’ve had to take guys out of the game and hold guys out of games more. I’ve never had that happen. So, I don’t know how I’d respond. I get fired up. I like to get after guys. I tell them, it’s like there’s this book called The Body Keeps Count or something like that and that your brain remembers traumatic events. And so, if I correct you, like, ‘Hey, next time make sure you get your head outside’. That’s not very traumatic. But if I go off, ‘hey, get your freaking head outside. We have to get going, let’s go!’ That then marks the guy and it’s like, ‘oh, now I’m going to make sure I remember to get my head outside.’ So that’s what I kind of do to try to, I try to boom, take it from zero to 100, snap them back into it and just hope they get it done. If a guy didn’t want to go into the game I’d be like, ‘okay, fine, take it in.’ I mean, it is what it is. If he doesn’t want to play, get him out of there, get him gone. And it is what it is. It’s a difficult situation. Never heard of it before, but it happens and I think it’s been handled properly. I just, I wouldn’t know what I would do. I wouldn’t snap on a guy probably.”