Kyle Shanahan has seemingly leaned toward quarterbacks who are pocket passers and can endure a beating without impacting their play. The NFL has seen an influx of dynamic passers who can do damage with both their arm and their legs. The 49ers face a couple of those quarterbacks within their division in Russell Wilson and Kyler Murray, and the defense has struggled to stop them consistently.
On Wednesday, Shanahan was asked if he's changed how he evaluates quarterbacks since he's become a head coach and seen what those dual-threat signal-callers can do to opposing defenses.
"I don't know if it's because I'm a head coach — maybe, I don't know — but how I evaluate everything is always changing," Shanahan responded. "I mean, things change, people change, you start to see you can win football games with any type of quarterback, as long as they are good enough. And you can be good enough in hundreds of different ways."
Despite Shanahan offering a vote of confidence in Jimmy Garoppolo last month, there is a lot of speculation that the 49ers might move on from their franchise quarterback. Of course, that has led to discussions surrounding what type of quarterback Shanahan might favor, especially with several interesting prospects in the upcoming draft.
Shanahan doesn't see himself as inflexible. After all, he has worked with several different styles of quarterback play over his career.
"I evaluate quarterbacks in terms of trying to find people who can have a chance to be one of those elite-type guys," Shanahan said, "and there's lots of different ways to do it. You can see now, there's plenty of different ways. I don't think that will ever change.
"I don't think you have one certain type you're looking for. You're just trying to find a guy who is better than about 98 percent of the people on this planet, or in this country, and when you find that, you get him, and you adjust to him."
