San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan and defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen spoke to reporters ahead of Wednesday's practice as the team prepares for its Week 13 matchup against the Buffalo Bills. Here's everything they said.
Transcripts provided by the San Francisco 49ers Communications staff.
Head Coach Kyle Shanahan
Opening comments:
"Practice today: [OL] Aaron Banks, concussion, will be out, [DL] Jordan Elliott, concussion, will be out, [LB Demetrius] Flannigan-Fowles, knee, out, [DB Deommodore] Dmo Lenoir, knee, out, [DL] Nick Bosa, hip/oblique, out, [T] Trent Williams, ankle, out, [RB] Christian McCaffrey, just rest, [QB] Brock Purdy, right shoulder, limited, [OL Dominick] Puni, shoulder, limited, [LB Dre] Greenlaw, Achilles, limited, [DL] Kevin Givens, groin, limited. That's it."
With Lenoir, what was the diagnosis?
"He just banged knees."
Was it long-term or? I know he's out today, but just, is it concern that it could be long-term?
"He can't go today, so I mean, but no, we're not ruling him out for this week. Hopefully he'll be able to go tomorrow."
As far as Brock, I think he was limited last Wednesday, he didn't do any throwing. Will it be like that or will he actually be throwing the ball?
"We'll decide when we get out there."
WR Jacob Cowing is out of the protocol?
"Yes."
Minnesota Vikings QB Daniel Jones signed with the Vikings today. It had been reported that I think that you guys may have had some level of interest. How would you describe your guys' interest in him?
"We discussed it. Yep, that's about it."
I know you said Cowing is out of the protocol. What'd you think of WR Ricky Pearsall and how he looked back there fielding punts and would you consider making him your full-time guy?
"I thought he did a good job. But I mean, we didn't consider making a change or anything. Jake is healthy. He'll probably go. But, we've got two good options there. Ricky did a real good job."
I know you guys are off tomorrow, but how much work will you put in despite it being Thanksgiving?
"Oh, we're not off tomorrow."
You're not off tomorrow?
"I don't know anyone who gets Thanksgiving off. You just, you start a little bit earlier, you cram a lot in, there's less time in between. Everyone has different ways to do it. But no, I don't know anyone who gives it off, unless maybe you have like a Monday night game, you have an eight-day week, maybe you could do that. But you just start a lot earlier, you get the players out, you usually don't watch film right after, you usually pick that up the next morning pretty early. Did you ask when I get out?"
I didn't know if you were working here. I knew you were going to be working, but I didn't know how much.
"No, we usually, I mean we cram everything in and the players get out earlier. So, it allows us to start what we usually do on Thursday nights, our redzone, we prepare for our team meetings and everything that we do Friday morning. But everyone gets out, tries to be home with the family by five. I usually get home around seven and they're all mad at me. And then I eat my dinner and get back to the redzone."
I think president of football operations/general manager John Lynch, on KNBR, discussed Dre Greenlaw doing some mock games out there on the practice field. What's that all about? What went into those sort of sessions to get him ready for opening his window this week?
"I didn't watch him or anything, but I mean that's what all our guys kind of go through who are on IR. Like [S Talanoa Hufanga] Huf's doing that this week. You're just not allowed to be with coaches or anything like that until you're off of, until you open their window. So they don't like their first time doing true football drills and everything to be that. So when they go out on their own with their training staff, they're doing less like rehab stuff and more doing like what they would do in individual, a trainer taking them through that, doing the reps of what they do in practice. They try to get a normal practice week in so they can get their yards, all their output and input, whatever it is, for the GPSs and everything that they do in a normal Wednesday practice to see how sore they are on Thursday. Then they do that same thing on Thursday to see how sore they are on Friday. Then they try to have a workout on Sunday to see that. And they do that and then we open up their window and then they have three weeks to go through that before we can make a decision."
Does that signal that Hufanga's window might be opening up soon as well?
"It signals that it's got chance to."
LB Fred Warner, after the game, said he didn't feel like the defense was prepared for some of the Packers run looks. And then it's out there, 'Oh yeah, it's an indictment of the coaching staff and defensive coordinator Nick Sorensen.' Is that a fair characterization of what happened and were you disappointed with the level of preparation?
"No, not at all. They had two new runs that they hadn't done before. They're not new runs, they're just formations, which happens every week. That's all we really do. We could try to come up with a new formation around the same run and try to get guys to take the bait on something. And they had a new one and they took the bait twice and got our guys out of a gap. But that's every week."
How much of a lift do you think it's going to be to get Dre back out there?
"I mean, we'll see how it goes. It'll be awesome just to have him on the field today. We love, when Dre's around, whether it's on the field, in meeting rooms, he's 100-percent ball. Everyone loves him in here and just watching him fly around out there today will be real fun."
After watching film from the past game against the Packers, knowing that you're preparing for Buffalo, what have you kind of reflected on when it comes to the miscues and the self-inflicted wounds that you're kind of harping on in practice, if any, and taking it took to Buffalo this weekend?
"There's not much secret to it. We've got to tackle better and we can't turn it over three times and three drives in a row. The penalties that we can change, a couple pre-snap penalties, one 12-on-the-field, one bad holding that we had, those are the ones that we've got to fix."
With the weather possibly snowing, how does that impact your, I guess your plan, your scheme? Do you have to do extra preparations for that contingency or you just shift on the fly?
"No, you've got to have an idea of how the game's going to play out and how it's going to go, which you do in every situation. You have an idea of that if you have certain guys get hurt, you have an idea of that if the weather always changes. You know, when you go into it and you hear that it could be the weather that it is, you take that in your mind a lot understanding how the game can be but you don't make a full game plan for that, because I've listened to plenty of weather reports that changed that day too. So you've got to be ready for anything, just like you are with injuries, but we fully understand what the elements may be."
Since CMC came back, you're not really using RB Isaac Guerendo or RB Jordan Mason that much. I think seven carries combined in three games. Is it their ball security issues is an issue or is it just the greatness of McCaffrey precludes them from getting on the field?
"No, I just think, even when Mason was going a ton, we didn't get Isaac a lot. So I mean, we're not just a big three-man-rotation team, especially when you have a solidified starter. We're not trying to get Christian off the field more. We want to keep him fresh and keep him at his best, but Christian's also a guy who gets better as he goes. He's a guy who feels a lot more comfortable being out there. I also don't think the way these games have gone, we didn't run the ball much last week at all in general. So not many people, we didn't, I think we got 14 runs. So when that's the case, you're not going on long drives, you only have 13 plays or 14 plays in the whole first half with one of them being close to a two-minute drive, the other's being four-and-out. It's just not going to work out that way."
Have you talked to him in terms of just how he's feeling, if he feels like he kind of has the same steps that he had in the past years? That first game looked like the second effort that he usually plays with was there just wasn't room to run?
"Yeah, I think, we haven't been, we haven't played that well these last two weeks or we haven't got the running game going these last two weeks. Thought it was better versus Tampa, we just didn't get a big one. But I mean, the speculation on Christian, I think, is a little bit unfair to him. Christian's playing very well, he is playing his ass off. But to think a guy who misses an entire offseason is just going to be the exact same the day he gets back would be unfair to any player in the world, I feel like. Guys who miss offseasons and miss training camp, usually it takes them a little bit of time at the beginning of the year to get back into how they were the year before, let alone missing half the season also on top of that. So, I think Christian's doing a hell of a job. But to just think him coming back in Week Eight with not being able to do anything for the last nine months or whatever it is, and to think he's just going to be in MVP form is a very unrealistic expectation."
When you watch him, is it more physical things that he's still trying to get back or is it just vision or is it maybe a little bit of everything?
"I think he looks real good. I think he's playing very well. I don't think he's had a bunch of clean lanes. I think he had a couple versus, when I say a couple, I actually mean two versus Tampa, and if he hits those two which maybe is just half a step off just with seeing it. But you hit those two and it'll completely change yards-per-carry, which will look better from an outside perspective, but it won't change anything in actually what's happening. So to sit here and talk like he's struggling, not going to do that at all. But for us to be disappointed that he's not exactly how he was or just right in MVP form, that'd be unfair with any player."
You have a pretty matter-of-fact and direct approach in times when you're winning. I'm curious, do you think when times you're struggling, like now, do you have to, do you choose your words differently? Do you want to be the same guy every day or how do you approach that?
"I don't plan anything really like that and have a, I don't like turn to chapter four in a book and say how to act this week. I look at what's happening, I look at who we're playing, I look at every situation that it is and that's the stuff I address. It's not a movie, I'm a football coach and I address our team for the reality that we're in. And the reality that you're in isn't a story, it's what we see on that tape, it's what we do in practice, it's what our situation is with injuries, it's who we're playing. And that's really what you do day-in and day-out for an entire season, for preseason, offseason, to winning, to losing, it's really all the same. You just coach and will do everything you can to get everyone's skills right."
Christian seems like a guy that takes maybe his lack of production very personally. He sat in his locker for about 15 minutes after the game on Sunday. Do you have to talk to him and make sure that he's okay mentally?
"I think that's what makes Christian great. Christian, I've told you guys, he's a psycho in the best way possible. Christian had a fumble there at the end of the game. No matter what I say to him, he is not going to forgive himself for a fumble for probably the rest of his life, he'll still be mad at himself for that. That's just how he rolls. That's his mindset in everything. You should see him in OTAs, if he drops the ball and how he acts after that and apologizing to us later in the day for a dropped ball in OTAs on period one. That's what makes him great and it means a lot to him."
You're 5-6, who thought you'd be in this situation here. I don't think you're shocked to learn, you're being criticized, 'you should do this, you should do that.' When you look at your performance this season, how would you grade yourself? How are you doing?
"That's up to you guys to grade me. I work as hard as I can to get a win that week and we haven't won as much as I believe we should have. We've lost three games that I feel we were capable of winning and should have won. Those are the ones that are the toughest. In terms of grading myself, I'm not going to grade myself. I'm going to work as hard as I can. I'm the same guy I am right now that I've always been. We've got to overcome some things that we're in right now. I believe we can overcome them, but we put ourselves in a tough bind and that's why we've got to be extremely good and successful here going forward to be able to overcome that stuff."
There's a lot of people online who are saying a lot of things. I know you don't always look at that, but a lot of those people aren't in your locker room. What do you make of the vibe in your locker room right now?
"The vibe in our locker room is exactly how you would think it'd be. We're upset with where we're at in our record, but we've got a tight group and we play together. I think if you live in the world online, whether you're dealing with our profession or your kids dealing with social issues in school, you're not going to be happy if you're dealing in the world online. And I've definitely coached long enough that I don't deal in that world. Only online I look at is usually movie stuff and rap battles and funny things that animals do. Good or bad. When you listen to good stuff, like that'll mess you up more than anything. And then when you listen to bad stuff it'll crush you. That's not why any of us do this. You've got to work with younger guys on that. I think it's harder just because of the world that they've been brought up in. But don't make someone else's reality your reality. You've got to focus on what your job is and never get away from that."
I know that QB Brandon Allen and WR Ricky Pearsall must not have had a lot of reps together, but Pearsall wasn't targeted in the game. Is he getting open as well as you'd like? Where has he been the last few weeks?
"I think he's been fine. It doesn't work out that way. When you talk about getting open, I talk about getting open as in did you beat man-coverage? They played two snaps of man-coverage in that game on our drive at the end of the third quarter where we went down and scored, and they didn't do it after. So, that's about high-lowing people. When they play deep, you check it down. It's about getting screens to people is really the only way you can dictate if they get a touch. But when you go to zone defenses, I don't really look at that as can guys get open? It's how are we dispersing the field? What's the time to go through a progression and do they catch it when we go to them and get up the field?"
49ers Defensive Coordinator Nick Sorensen
What stood out most when you're watching film of the Green Bay game? Is it the missed tackles or I guess is that it?
"That's one of them. It was just the tail of the halves with the run game, especially in the first half, tackling was a part. Early on we got got with a call, we tried to pressure there early, and it worked for them and not for us. So they got us. We could have tackled them for eight and then there was a really, really good open-field spin move. They got 18 out of it. So you'd like it to cut it to eight and not be an explosive. But they had got us there and then just some other plays in the run game early. We made some adjustments and fixed that in the second half. But it's hard when you get behind like that. We didn't take the ball. I think we had multiple ops. They made their ops, we didn't. It makes a huge difference in the game. So when they can control every aspect of it, starting with the run game and then we didn't, five for five in the redzone, you can't do that. I don't care how they get down there. We can't. The list is pretty long in my book. We did some things good, but there's a lot that we can be better at. And our guys know it. We're determined and we've got to fix it."
What's your coaching style? You missed 19 tackles, you're the coordinator. Do you start throwing stuff? Are you calm or you start calling guys out? What's the process?
"I don't, I'm not a yeller. It's pretty evident. It's coach it up and we' got to fix it or find someone else that can do it. But I think in that game there was a consistent not running our feet. And I think a lot of it came down to the running back too. I think we knew going into it, we had to get body on body. But he was really good. He's a really good jump cutter. He is good on the spin. He is as good as they get in the league, I think. So with us, that's why I continue to work at tackling circuit every week. It's hard when you don't have the pads on so even when we take them off we're still going to do it because you can go a whole practice and not really get that. So it's emphasizing running your feet, wrap, squeeze, drive for five and it showed up in the game."
You were a player, so there are no acceptable excuses, but are you seeing fatigue with the players because sometimes when guys fall off tackles it's just they get to a certain point they're running out of gas a little bit?
"I don't see that. I don't think that because our guys train hard and they're prepared. I just think it's the consciousness of you see so many times people approach a tackle, and we talked about sprint tackling earlier in the year when we talked about the tackling. Runners like that, that can jump cut, they want you to come up and come to balance where a lot of people think you need to come to balance, sit in a chair. But the best thing you can do is just keep going, keep running your feet. It's just continually repping it and having that mindset of just accelerating through and not, if you stop, he will juke you. He will catch you on a jump cut and get you moved. Especially with him because he could run through an edge, like run through his shoulder because how fast he could reaccelerate. So it's just applying what we already know and being as detailed as possible on executing it."
After the game, LB Fred Warner said they presented different run looks than what we had prepared for in the first half. Can you expand on that? What did happen there?
"I think there were some formations. They didn't do it quite as much leading up to it. And they did it a few times in the game. We had repped them during the week, but not quite as much. So that was part of the stuff that we had to fix and make those adjustments."
Are those adjustments ongoing?
"Yeah, we're always talking through stuff and do we need to change a call? We see it this way. That's why you have the little pads on the sideline, and we talk through stuff, how we saw it, we're talking with the guys upstairs, talking with the players. Some games you adjust, sometimes you don't. There's always continuous, it just depends."
Can you address the 12-men-on-the-field penalties back-to-back?
"Yeah, it's pure communication. It's starts with me. We emphasize and we have to fix it. We're doing all we can to do it. Starts with non-verbal, then it turns to verbal. Know who's in, know who's out and what personnel grouping, whether it's nickel, base or you go with more D-Linemen. I think the first one was they were approaching the huddle in a way that, to me it seemed quicker because they had subbed, got to the huddle. And that's something for me, I feel like we should be allowed to sub. We're still working through what the exact rules on that are because they subbed late into the huddle. So, we need to be able to sub. There's kind of an argument about it. And then the second one, there's no excuse. There's no excuse. Players, coaches, all of us."
With the redzone and the goal line you talked about, what have you seen out of the goal line defense this year? Are there any strides or is it simple breakdowns or what's gone wrong?
"I feel like we're getting hits on guys. It's not like super easy. You just can't let him get that many shots. And the closer you get, the harder it gets. We're like hitting a guy but it's on the one or the two and you keep getting a yard and a yard. It's really cool if it was on the 15 and you hit them and they get a yard and you're like, 'alright, it's second and nine.' Or if they do it again, 'okay, cool, it's third and eight,' but you're down low. So, we've got to do our best to not let them get in the low, low and continue to find ways to execute the right way so they don't get a touchdown. It's a four-point difference. It's a huge difference, especially with that many of them."
What's the challenge this week? Buffalo's scored 30, I think, in five straight games and they picked up Buffalo Bills WR Amari Cooper, they got a couple different backs, the quarterback can run. What do they look like on film?
"It's all that. I think it starts with [Buffalo Bills QB] Josh Allen. I think he continues to get better. He's all what he's always been, effective, being able to run and scramble and find guys. The difference I think with him this year is just being more effective. He's grown as far as being able to throw on time. If you give him something, he has the arm to be able to rip it, wherever that given throw is. But he's really good at moving guys in zones and being pinpoint accurate with it, but how fast and how he can accelerate the throws. And then with him it's his size and his speed, the ability to throw it on the run, especially down the field. A lot of guys don't have that vision downfield. I feel like he sees that really, really well and he can throw it really, really well. And he can find a gap that he needs to escape, but then also still stay alive. And in certain situations, he can run you over or he can slide. So, you have to be ready for both and be able to react to both."
You've been doing this a long time as a player and a coach, you know how this works. The team goes to the Super Bowl and now they're 5-6. There are all sorts of criticism for everybody and you're getting some, 'what's wrong with this defensive coordinator?' How would you assess your performance and just kind of how you've done this year?
"I'm just focused on each week. Honestly that's the truth. If we don't win, I feel like it's not good enough. That's the truth. That's all I care about. I don't know all the numbers, whatever. I'm not here to assess where I'm at. I'm about, are we winning? And then, are we getting better? Are we working hard to get better and are we winning the game? So if we don't win, it's not good enough. It's never going to be perfect so we can always coach it and get better. I feel like our guys have gotten better because we've had some new guys and I like to see the development of them, but it's not about moral victories in that way. It's good to see our guys grow. I'm really proud of them and that they battle, and they get better. And I think as a unit we are getting better. You want to see it applied and win the game."
