San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan joined KNBR this morning, his first time publicly speaking since the trade for Carolina Panthers running back Christian McCaffrey.
What was the coach's reaction last night when general manager John Lynch told him the 49ers got the deal done?
"It was more a big smile and then like, 'All right, I've got to go back and redo third downs, redo red zone, redo everything.' And then it was like, 'Wait a second. He's still got to come and pass the physical. He's not going to be at practice.'"
Does that mean Shanahan expects McCaffrey to play on Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs?
"I'm still up in the air whether we're going to be able to get him here for Sunday or not," Shanahan said. "I know for sure he'll be here the following Sunday. But that's kind of why I'm in a wait-and-see approach right now."
Shanahan added, "I'm not sure at all [about Sunday]. This happened so fast, and we've just got to see where he's at."
Where he's at is on a plane, traveling for the Bay Area. McCaffrey started his trip this morning. The coach plans to speak with his new running back after he arrives in the Bay Area and gets to the facility. However, he doesn't anticipate talking with McCaffrey until after today's practice.
As for the impending physical, Shanahan is confident there won't be any complications there. McCaffrey has been practicing with the Panthers.
Shanahan also shared how the trade recently heated up and how the whole deal went down.
"We hear the same thing that everyone else does, what players are kind of available in the trade market, and it starts to pick up," Shanahan said on the Murph & Mac show. "You start to hear rumblings a couple of weeks before it happens, probably about 10 days ago. So we always float it around to each other, but any time my wife or someone hears this guy's available, she's going to get real excited, like, 'Hey, are we getting him?'
"There's usually a two percent chance. So when you hear those types of things, you never get too set on that track, but you kind of just float it around for a few days, for a few weeks, and you see if it heats up. And the more realistic the chances get, the more we talk about.
"I think in the last couple of days, it started to seem like—we always knew it made sense for us, but you've got to see how you're going to get there, who you're competing with, and things like that. In the last couple of days, we kind of saw that we had a chance to compete for him, and it turned up here.
"I wish I could say that I was doing anything [with the trade talks], but I'm not doing anything. This isn't me. I'm sitting here, coaching this team, getting ready for the Chiefs, and John's been working the phones, dealing with Carolina here for the last 48 hours, and keeps telling me, 'We've got a chance. It's getting close.' I'm sitting down here last night, just finishing up red zone and stuff, and right towards the end, I find out we got it done, and I'm pretty excited, to tell the truth."
49ers fans are excited too. The addition of McCaffrey thrusts the 3-3 team back into the conversation as Super Bowl contenders.
You can listen to the entire conversation with Shanahan below.
