San Francisco 49ers offensive line coach and run game coordinator Chris Foerster spoke to reporters on Thursday as the team prepares for its preseason matchup against the New Orleans Saints. Here is everything he said.
Transcript provided by the San Francisco 49ers Communications staff.
What was your evaluation of OL Dominick Puni in the game?
"Good. He's played well. He's kind of been consistent throughout, the way he started camp and has continued to work every week. He's been a pretty consistent performer. Everything we saw him do in practice, he did in the game."
He pulled on that touchdown. That's something that you do a lot with OL Aaron Banks. Is he good at that?
"He's good at it. There are some things about him, the move inside, there's some little things that he needs to work on. Pulling is going to be one of them. But he's done a really good job in everything, he's developing in all his areas. He's very diligent in studying and what to do next, listening and taking coaching. He's doing a nice job. But that is going to be something he has to work on."
OL Chris Hubbard, how did he grade out and can he play comfortably on both sides?
"Chris can play both sides. That's why we're working him primarily on the left, because he's more uncomfortable there. He's more comfortable on the right side, in my opinion. So I've decided to dedicate those two guys kind of opposite where they're used to doing it, he and [OL Brandon] Parker. And then if we get to, whichever, however the thing shakes out, if one of them is here to be a swing or something like that, they could go back to working both. But right now, I think I can let them put their best foot forward working in a position to get better where their weaknesses are. And also, they'd stay in one spot every single day. He performed well. Every player would like a few plays back and I think Hubbard would like one or two back, for sure."
Has OL Jaylon Moore played enough at this point where missing that game for being ill is not that big of a deal?
"Yeah. The first preseason game, he was going to play the series. It ended up, I think it was an 11-play drive, wasn't it? The penalty was the 12th play. So he'd have 11 plays, for what that's worth. I think I shared it last week – there's something to that full-speed work that regardless of when you get it, you do need it at some point. It's not like what he did on whatever the date was, is going make a difference opening day. But it does in the big scheme of things."
Last year with RB Christian McCaffrey winning the NFL rushing title for the year. It kind of goes under the radar when you're in the middle of a Super Bowl run. Is there a way that you guys kind of honored it or celebrated it? And then what is it going to take to kind of repeat that success?
"I don't know if the guys did anything. We don't. We're more, 'Congratulations.' All those honors, because so many guys, we have a lot of good players on this team that have won a lot of things. We don't do anything for that to say, 'Hey, he won an individual rushing title.' I know that he did take care of the guys at Christmas or something. I don't know. There was a gift or something. Line coach didn't see it, but all players did [laughs]. I don't do any blocking, so I don't deserve any of it. And I don't like golf. We all, obviously, had congratulations to go around, but nothing big like that for the individual merit."
And then what is it going to take to just kind of repeat that success this year?
"Every year is different. The cliche answer is a cliche for a reason. Every year it's a brand new year. You have to get out there and start doing things and see where it goes. How defenses play you, there's so many different things that can come into it that. How well your quarterback plays, if your receivers are healthy, that you can throw the ball and keep them off your running game. And there's just so many things. You look at the run we had to open in Pittsburgh, we watched it the other day and the big 50 or 60-yard run start in the second half. And it was an incredible run. Maybe that guy tackles him this year. You have four or five of those in a year and it looks different. You just don't know how it goes and how the season plays out. We were able to get a lot of runs in the fourth quarter of games this year. There were a lot of games that we don't have a lot of two-minute drives, but we sure to have a lot of trying to kill the clock at the end of the game."
You guys have, in the past, sometimes rotated guys at a position. What are the benefits of that for a young guy?
"Oh, it's huge. I don't know how I decide to do it, but you can kind of tell. I even did it with [OL Jon] Feliciano, who I didn't think Feliciano was going to play as much in the Green Bay game, in the playoffs. But also, I noticed I said [Green Bay Packers DL Kenny Clark] 97 was giving him some issues. So instead of getting in a routine of rushing Jon Feliciano, you put [OL Spencer] Burford in there, and the defender has to deal with a different guy. For young players, that was the sidelight. It can help anybody. For a young player, those plays start mounting up where you start doing some bad, you get out and just take a step away. It stops whatever is going on and you get to go back in and restart. That guy then has to deal with a different player. And over the course of time, usually what happens is you have a veteran player and a younger player. The younger player, you think has more talent. That's why you're alternating. He's just not quite ready to play 60 plays a game. And our position is one, like some other positions on the field, that defensive line, for example, you can get a rookie 20, 30, 40 plays because they rotate so much. That's what starters do. Offensive lineman, you can't, people think you shouldn't, I know you can do it. That's a great way to work a player in, just because he doesn't get exposed. Analytics, they would say every time we took him out, they were saying that was about the time his play was starting to do this [go down]. Now, I'm not saying I did it because of that. I kind of had, in my mind, two series, three series, but you can kind of feel that, and you talk to him on the side, you feel that things are getting a little loose. Let's bring him back over here and they stand for a minute, catch their breath and they can usually get back into a rhythm."
A lot of coaches preach the continuity. When did you first maybe, do that with the figuring out, okay, it was worth shuffling?
"Well, here's what I saw. When I was with the Vikings, we drafted a rookie tackle that, I watched him be completely destroyed. Week after week, game after game, he wasn't quite good enough. He wasn't quite ready. And by mid to the end of the season, he went on IR because he just was, he was beat up. He was just hanging on for dear life. We didn't have somebody to rotate, but we did have somebody that would've helped him. When I went to Tampa, we had a veteran player there at right tackle that came from another team, and we had a right tackle that I thought could be as good. And we just started started rotating. That was the first time I did it, was back in, I think we were in orange, I think it was 1996 I did it. And then I did it again in Baltimore. Did it a couple different places where it's, we managed through it. We've been lucky, that it's worked out. It's worked out that way that you can help the development."
Where do things stand at backup center?
"Well, right now, you have [OL Ben] Bartch and [OL Nick] Zakelj that are battling it out with [OL Drake] Nugent there as well. You got three guys there that can do it and that will work the backup, and we'll see how it plays out as the year goes on. Zakelj, obviously, took the starting reps. I would say that if you looked at them and said, what Zakelj's strengths and what Bartch's are, I think that Zakelj's probably playing a little bit better. Center suited him better and guard probably suits Bartch better. Not that either one of them has played center. That's the first game Zakelj's ever played, in a game, center – in college, anywhere. So, I give him the edge right now, but they're both right there. Because then if you move Zakelj to guard, Bartch to center, it just depends on what you're looking at. You look at it and say, okay, one of those guys will be your third or fourth guard, backup center. It's just, it's a lot of pieces we're moving there. That's where it sits right now."'
Have you decided who is going to play what against the Saints?
"No. [Head coach] Kyle [Shanahan] and I briefly talked about it. I think some of it leads up to discussions on the last game, because you have a small window of time between Sunday and Friday. You have to be careful how many guys you want to play. So you look forward to that game and you work back and say, 'Okay, if we have a lot of players playing in that game, then maybe not as many this week.' Because of the short turnaround. You don't want to give them a short week in the preseason, if you can help it."
What does OL Jarrett Kingston look like to you?
"He's getting better all the time. He's improving. What I love about these young guys, [president of football operations/general manager] John Lynch and I were talking about this morning is these guys are really working hard to improve and they've made some good strides. It's a tribute to them, not to me. We just do what we do. We go out there and do the same thing every day. But these guys have grabbed onto it and he has gotten better. The things that we saw that were limitations with him we felt were fixable. And so he's been able to fix some of them. It's still not consistent but it's gotten better. So there were things that get addressed and we addressed them and he's addressed them, which is good. Sometimes it's hard to break a habit and we've talked about it in here before where in a game, when you start creating bad habits, they're hard to break. And these guys over the course of their college career have some bad habits that you have to break and the things he had wrong, he's really fixed. And so that's helped elevate his game every week."
Do you see him as a guard or more of a tackle?
"More guard. He's played tackle out of necessity. And can still in a pinch, but he's a guard. Although he's got issues. He's got to work on his anchor and things like that inside. There's pluses and minus at both positions for him. So he's got to make up some space at guard to get better there."
You ran the ball so well with RB Jordan Mason on the opening series and then after, it was considerably tougher for RB Cody Schrader and RB Matthew Breida. Was that just being behind a second line? Were there things they didn't see that Mason did see?
"No, no. We didn't block well at all. We were down and these aren't excuses just an explanation for me, I'm looking at it saying, 'why, holy cow.' Well, really at the end of the day, when you take [T] Trent [Williams], Jaylon, Feliciano and Burford out of the equation, you've taken four or five people that are really starting caliber players. So then all of a sudden, your starting group becomes a little bit more of a second tier group, and then the next group becomes more of a later in the game group. And so by that point, that second, third quarter, it was a good challenge for those guys. It was good to watch them against that caliber of player. They probably wouldn't see in the fourth quarter of the game when most of them would've been playing. Everybody's been pushed up to play at a little bit higher level than what they would've if our starters were here. All healthy in there in playing. So it's huge. It's a benefit, but the drawback is they're put in there in situations and we didn't give the backs enough good looks. Fortunately, and we'll see how this week goes, it's a whole different thing. We'll protect it. We protected decently. It was decent. In the fourth quarter, we got a little bit loose at the two tackles. But we protected good enough, which then at least we could do that because we weren't running the ball very well."
It used to be that defenses didn't do a lot of blitzing in the preseason, I guess that's changed somewhat recently. How do you feel about that? Are you sort of glad that the Titans blitzed quite a bit just to give your guys some practice?
"Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. I do. I remember I was in Baltimore with [former NFL head coach] Rex Ryan and [former NFL head coach] Brian Billick. There was always discussion. Rex Ryan, he'd throw the kitchen sink at everybody, and they'd always have discussion, 'do we show them what we do or do we not show them and hold it until the regular season?' And Brian was like do everything in the preseason because that means everybody has to prepare for everything. Sometimes you realize in the fourth quarter, some of these games, defensive coordinators are calling things just because they know you're going to play them in two weeks that you have to prep for it. Not in the regular season, but in the preseason because you don't have a lot of tape on them, so you're scouting them, 'oh, we got to work on all these blitzes. They may never do it again all year. So sometimes it's a prep time. Every defensive coordinator uses different things. My philosophy is I want to see everything we can see. I want those guys to be prepped. And in other words, if Puni, or whoever these guys are that we're trying to evaluate, if they just see one front, one defense all the time. What evaluation are you getting other than their physical? This gives them a mental challenge."
