San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is trying to spend as much time as he can with his family during the team's bye week. His family wouldn't even let him watch Thursday Night Football between the Tennessee Titans and the Pittsburgh Steelers. Instead, Shanahan, his wife, and kids enjoyed an evening viewing at home of Dodge Ball starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller.
On Friday morning, Shanahan was able to sneak away to jump on KNBR, where he did get to talk a little football. He shared that there isn't a clearly defined idea on who will start at quarterback when the team plays its next game on November 26 against the Seattle Seahawks. Shanahan and the coaching staff will let the situation play out and use next week's practices, which begin on Monday, to determine the who will lead the offense.
"[Due to] NFL rules, we've got to give these guys at least four days off away from all coaches," Shanahan said on the "Murph & Mac" show. "We got to meet up there with Jimmy [Garoppolo] Monday through Wednesday, got a little head start with him, and we're going to give him a lot more practice reps next Monday."
Shanahan even broke down why it is so difficult for a quarterback like Jimmy Garoppolo to switch from one system to another. While rookie C.J. Beathard has had since early May to familiarize himself with Shanahan's playbook, Garoppolo has been taking a crash course over the last few weeks in learning the 49ers' offense.
"It's going well," Shanahan said. "He's coming along. In my opinion, you won't feel totally comfortable with it until next year. But he's getting a chance because he's been grinding pretty hard, spending a lot of extra time up there with Rich Scangarello, our quarterback coach, and he's been really finding a way to where when he does get in, he can function. He knows a set group of plays. It's not just pass plays. He's got to be able to get us in and out of the right runs, all the situational calls, the short-yardage, the third downs, and he's come along with that.
"It's something that I don't think you ever fully grasp until you've done it for a while. Even C.J. is still working his way through that. He had all of OTAs, all of training camp. He's been part of a game plan going on ten-straight weeks now. He's got a head start with that but it takes guys a while, and I think Jimmy's moving along as fast as he possibly can."
Shanahan went into further detail, explaining the move from the New England Patriots' offense to the 49ers'.
"The terminology we use is from the West Coast foundation, which, obviously, started back with Bill Walsh with the way we verbalize our plays and the concepts we use," Shanahan said. "Then you go to New England ... it's totally different. Where we use words to do formations, they use numbers."
"Their protections are totally different. They might have a word that's a run play, but it's a pass play for us," Shanahan continued. "It's little things like that where you just start to grasp your mind around it. You can usually learn it pretty fast just to function before you go out and repeat it so players can hear what you're saying. Then you've got to go to the line and process: What do these words mean? Where are these guys going? Not to mention: What's the front? What's the coverage? How do I get in and out of these checks?"
Shanahan compares learning an NFL offense to learning a new language in school.
"When I was in school, I was pretty much a crammer," Shanahan said. "I would do sports, and then I would cram hard a few days before the test. That's why a foreign language was one I never did good in. That's something you can't really cram. You just can't cram in a language. You have to stick with it every day. You have to speak it. You have to go through the reps of it, and it just happens over time."
You can listen to the entire interview with Shanahan below.
