San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan spoke to reporters ahead of Wednesday's practice as the team prepares for its Week 4 matchup against the New England Patriots. Here's everything he shared.
Transcript provided by the San Francisco 49ers Communications staff.
Opening comments:
"Injuries for today: [DL] Javon Hargrave, triceps, will not practice, [WR] Deebo [Samuel Sr.], calf, won't practice, [LB] Dee Winters, ankle, won't practice, [T] Trent Williams is sick, won't practice, [TE] George Kittle, hamstring, limited. Go ahead."
QB Brock Purdy is full-go?
"Full-go, yep."
Do you have any update from RB Christian McCaffrey on his trip? Was it helpful?
"No update. I haven't talked to him."
Is there a chance he won't play this season?
"Not that I know of."
I know that you're a big fan of analytics.
"Sometimes."
There's an analytic out there about separation win rate for receivers and WR Brandon Aiyuk is at the top of that list. I'm just wondering whether you're sort of saying the same thing, that he is separating like he's done in the past?
"You're saying top as in separating a lot?"
I guess separating from coverage. Getting open.
"Yeah, I definitely think he is. You're saying the analytics matches that?"
That's what it's suggesting. I'm just wondering whether your eye is seeing that?
"Oh yeah, I do. We played a lot of zone coverage here in the last couple weeks. Usually when it's zone there's not many people around the guys, there's just people underneath. It's about throwing over people. And he's done a good job in man-coverage too."
How do you think it's going defensively? Obviously, the stats aren't there. You mentioned guys are getting open deep. We asked you then, is there something structurally that's going wrong here or how do you circle what's been happening on defense?
"I think all three levels have had an issue at times. I think that we've played good at times too. I didn't say a lot of guys are getting deep on us, on both of them. It's been twice in three games, which were big ones. But when you have the PIs, those are too big of penalties too. But two guys have gone by our defense. One just caught us sleeping a little bit and the other one, I think, was basically yelling 500 and bombing it. Had him in double-coverage and the guy made a hell of a play. But nothing structurally wrong with that, but two plays that you would love to have back. But I just think we've had some new guys in there. We've had moments where we've been strong, but we're not playing up to how we usually do and we've got to make sure to get back to playing that way."
What's assistant head coach/defense Brandon Staley's role been in these first few games and could you see this evolving as the season goes?
"Evolving in what, his?"
Doing more things, doing different things.
"No, he works like all the other coaches do and he's the same as all the other coaches. He's not here to do anything extra than that, if that's what you're asking."
For so long, you guys have relied on your front four to generate most of your pass rush. Without Javon, now especially, do you feel like you have enough there to do that or will you, do you see maybe adjustments having to be made in terms of that?
"You've got to have plans for that, and we do when Javon is here. You would love to always get there with front four. That's the goal. Getting there with four and having seven guys in coverage makes it a lot harder for the offense. But if you can't do that, you've got to mix it up. We mixed it up throughout the year. I thought our D-Line last week affected the quarterback the most that they had in their three games. I thought that they had one of their better games. But it's a huge loss, losing Javon. Guys are going to have to step it up and when you don't have the rush, then you've got to turn to other things schematically."
What does New England Patriots head coach Jerod Mayo's defense look like? What's that challenge going to be this week?
"It looks very similar to how it's always looked in New England. They're multiple looks, multiple fronts. They play the run very physically. I think they're top-five this year and last year I think they were top-two. The way they stop it with their front seven, the way their front players two-gap, how good their safeties are in tackling. And when they do play man-coverage, where they do quite a bit, their secondary is as good as there is at it."
You had described in great detail, Monday, about that busted coverage. Is there enough time in the day for you and the offense to go through all the scenarios on any given play? Not only what their defense, you know, what to do against a particular defense, but what to do if there is a bust and how they busted?
"[Laughter] That makes no sense, I'm sorry. You don't go through when people mess up, what to do. That's off-schedule is what people call it. And when it happens, you hope people see it. But you don't sit there and make up stuff all week and go through it, 'Hey, if I make this up,' I want to prepare you for what you need to make up at the time. That would be something that no one would ever do."
But you did mention that Aiyuk did the right thing on the busted coverage, so do you have general rules in place for that kind of stuff?
"Yeah, when no one's there, just like if they had 10 people on the field and no one lined up over the receiver, we don't want him to just sit there and run a slant. I hope he puts his hand up and runs the go-route so he walks into the endzone and I hope the quarterback is looking that way and sees it. It'd be the same thing when a corner is supposed to play deep-half and he sits at the line of scrimmage and they have two people and you're going to run your route and no one's there, you look up and do the same thing. But that's something that happens in football a lot. Happens throughout the games and that was a big one, because it happened at the end, but we just didn't fall into it the right way."
Is that feel on off-schedule play something that you would develop in training camp?
"No. The other 10 plays that Brock scrambled on and did, those are off-schedule plays that we did throughout the game. But what you guys are getting at, at a busted coverage is just, sorry but it's way off. That's not really part of something, that's off-schedule plays. I think Brock's done a really good job of finding those guys. He didn't find them there."
On Friday, I think president of football operations/general manager John Lynch said that maybe WR Jacob Cowing is getting ready to get in some action, maybe time to see some of the things he can do. Was that sort of the plan you had in terms of, "Let's get a younger player into the game," and then why didn't it happen on Sunday?
"Because it wasn't the plan. If there would've been an injury, he would've. But he wasn't ready to do that yet. And so we kept him at punt returner. But you have five guys up, so if someone did get hurt he had to be ready and then he would've got those reps."
Is he getting any closer to being ready for that?
"We'll see this week. Nothing's happened here in the last few days. We've got practice today and we'll see how he does. I hope so."
Do you have any sense of where WR Ricky Pearsall is psychologically, emotionally and whether he would be a viable possibility to play after this week?
"I'm not exactly sure of the timeline, but I know he is getting a lot healthier. Seems great when I talk to him, but that's something you could ask him."
What are you emphasizing with the special teams units this week and are you going to pay closer attention to them?
"I've got a lot of confidence in [special teams coordinator] Brian [Schneider]. He's sick about some of these plays that have happened here these last couple weeks. We're just trying to be on every detail, like we try to every week. But yeah, we can't have these two mistakes. I thought we were in a bad, I didn't think we had the right look on the fake punt. But as far as with the blocked punt and stuff, it's just going back to technique, coaching guys up on that better who were in that for the first time and making sure they continue to get better so it doesn't happen again."
Do you sleep a little bit easier this week knowing former NFL head coach Bill Belichick isn't on the opposing sideline when the Patriots are here?
"I don't really think about that stuff much. Just watching them on tape, they look like a real good team. I know we're going to have a huge challenge for us."
I know FB Kyle Juszczyk is a big part of your offense, but what does he bring that maybe we don't see?
"Just the threat of a fullback out there all the time. We're in a lot of 11 formations, so people like to go nickel-defense to defend one-back formations. But when you have a fullback on the field at any time there's a threat of I-formation. So defenses have to count for that. And there's some things that you do on one-back that aren't very sound versus two-back. So sometimes it could limit the looks we get and things like that."
It's been asked by analysts and discussed by former player-analysts that, can the Niners right the ship and kind of survive with all the injuries that you have right now? I just want to know, what are you kind of talking to the team about and is that an overarching feeling between the guys? Can we survive with all these injuries or are you guys kind of OK?
"Every time you have injuries, everyone knows it makes it tougher. But people have injuries throughout the league and you've got to be able to overcome those. I felt we had every chance to win on Sunday, despite some of our injuries. I felt we should have been 2-1. But we found a way to lose that, which is completely on us. And when you lose games that you believe you should have won, it makes it that much harder, injuries or no injuries. So I don't look into that to really why we lost. We had every opportunity to win that and we made some mistakes that cost us and that's what I hope we learned from. Not thinking about who we were missing. I thought we did some things that were good enough to win. But doing things just good enough to win doesn't always guarantee you win and you've got to make sure you do it all the way to the end. And sometimes it's who can do right longer and we didn't finish that till the end and I don't think that has anything to do with injuries."
How have you felt about the run defense, specifically? Where does Javon's injury kind of fall into that? Who do you need to see step up on the inside?
"It makes it tougher. When you have four inside guys up, on your roster, and then you go down to three, it always makes it tougher to stop the run. But we've got guys on practice squad that we need. We'll see how that works out as this week goes. And you've got to think of other fronts too and stuff that we've got to do at times. So a lot of stuff plays into that. Javon, whether it's run game or pass game, it makes it harder."
Two weeks in a row, you guys got burned by verticals. When you watch the film, some of them were penalties, but when you watch the film, are there any common denominators that you could point to as why you guys are giving up the verticals?
"Yeah, one was a post they got over and we've got to stay on top. They got us in quarters, where the quarter safety has the underneath thing and the corner's got to stay on top and he didn't, so they got by us and [Los Angeles Rams QB Matthew] Stafford's got a hell of an arm and aired it out. The next one, is what I said earlier. We had double-coverage on a really good player and they just bombed it and he made a good play. I think I answered that earlier."
Brock had 10 runs. I realize at least two of those were quarterback sneaks. He usually doesn't scramble that much, but is it partly a function of him not having all his guys, normal guys, out there?
"No. I think you've got a lot of three-man rushes. When you have a three-man rush, usually that's the number one thing. You stay in the pocket and try to buy time and once they eventually get you out of the pocket, you have eight guys looking at you and you break to get someone to come up to open people up. If they stay in coverage, then you take what you can get. A couple times, they jumped the cadence a couple times and he had to just get up in there and break out. But I think with the number being so high, I think it had to do with a few quarterback sneaks and a number of three-man rushes. Then the typical three times that it happens other plays."
