C.J. Beathard offers self-evaluation following his first start

When's the last time you had to run a read-option play? Never?

"No, I did. I think it was sophomore year of college. We had a little bit of that in. But, since then, no."

Were you excited during the week, during last week's practice, that that might be something you could do?

"Yeah, definitely. Any way we can give ourselves another opportunity to get yards, to get a first down. I feel confident in myself to be able to run a little bit. I think it was good."

How did you evaluate yourself after you got a chance to sit down and watch the game?

"There's a lot of things to improve on as a whole, as a team. We all looked at it and take a look at ourselves, each and every person try to fix what you can fix in yourself. Just try to get better. Little things by little things, that turn into big things. There's a lot of plays out there that you can improve on. Even a good play that can be better. That's kind of how I looked at the tape."

Any of those little things for you that you saw that maybe is an easy fix or something that you particularly want to work on this week?

"Yeah, there's a lot of things. I'm not about to just say everything."

How about one?

"Better fakes. Head down snaps, head up fakes, and stuff like that. Little things that can help. You don't know what it does to defenses, but if it has a chance to help your team, then, of course, you're going to try to do it."

How sore were you after the game on Monday and Tuesday?

"I was pretty sore."

You mentioned after the game the Cowboys maybe brought more pressures than you were expecting. As a quarterback, what adjustments can you make to prepare for that going forward, knowing that defenses are probably going to test you in that way?

"You just never know what you're going to get. You can't expect, especially me being a rookie quarterback, I think you could expect more pressure from teams just because, testing you, seeing what you know, if you can get the ball out or whatever. But, you've just got to be ready for anything."

When you look back at that, how were you as far as getting rid of the ball on time? Did you feel you were good in that area? Could you improve?

"Yeah, I feel like I did fine. But, I definitely can improve on it. I think we can all improve as a team, offense, defense, special teams. If we all do that we'll be a lot better."

Head coach Kyle Shanahan was saying how he enjoyed watching film with you because you ask the right questions. Did you enjoy watching film with him and why?

"Yeah, definitely. It was a lot to learn from him. It's his offense, it's his deal. I love to know what he's thinking on certain plays and how he processes certain plays and what he thinks about. So yeah, it was nice watching it with him."

Is he very much like a teacher going over things or an angry coach?

"He's really cool. He's really teaching in the film room and the classroom, teaching things. He's really awesome to learn from."

How often is the tape showing you things that you didn't know or didn't come away with on Sunday? How much of it is confirming what you feel like you already knew?

"I don't know. Like I said, you can learn something from every play. Whether it's a good play, a bad play, you're always trying to get better. If it's a play that I thought, 'You know, that was a good play, no, you could've done this a little bit better and it might've been a better play.' That's just how perfectionists are. You want to be perfect. You just want to do the best you can and get better at every step of the way."

The way you started your NFL career, it kind of parallels how you started at Iowa. You get thrown in. Are there some pretty good parallels there?

"I haven't really thought of it like that. I guess you could say in the same way. I came in late in the game, in the second quarter of a game. That was my first time really playing, then started the next game. I guess you can kind of say it's kind of the same. After I started my first game at Iowa the starting quarterback was healthy and he ended up playing there on out."

A 30-point loss affects the players differently as far as their psyche. How did it affect your psyche?

"Obviously after the game, it stinks. It's a tough loss. But, at the end of the day, you've got to move on and move past it. I think we've done a good job at that. We've got a big game this week ahead of us and we're all looking forward to that and hopefully get our first win."

Kyle mentioned you were texting him pretty shortly after the game. Was that Sunday night?

"Yeah."

Obviously, you weren't going to just sleep on that.

"Yeah, he's a player's coach, a guy that you can talk to. No one's scared of asking him questions and seeing what he thought about certain things. It's cool to get his perspective and ask him whether it be personal questions or game plan execution questions as well."

Did you look over the game at all or was it just because it was fresh in your mind?

"I think it was more fresh in my mind from playing."

* Transcript provided by the San Francisco 49ers