San Francisco 49ers offensive line coach and run game coordinator Chris Foerster spoke to reporters on Friday, before the team's third training camp practice. Here is everything he had to say.
Transcript provided by the San Francisco 49ers Communications staff.
With T Trent Williams not here yet, what kind of impact does that have on the room here in the early days of training camp?
"Other guys have to step up. [OL] Jaylon [Moore] gets his reps, which he would this time of year anyway. Trent would usually take a day off. In the offseason program, usually Jaylon gets all the work. So unfortunately, it's always been a problem for Jaylon. He hasn't had a chance to compete at other positions because he's always kind of filled in for Trent in this time of year. So obviously you worry about the guys that are here. Jay and the guys are working really hard. It's been a good start to camp. First couple days have been good. It's been good to see."
What kind of warmup does a guy who has played 14 seasons like Trent really need? When would you want to see him come in to get ready for the Jets?
"As soon as possible. The reps that he takes now are valuable. I think he usually practices two of the, we do everything kind of in three-day blocks before we take a day off, and usually he practices two of those three days and he usually takes the full amount of the reps. I think maybe one of the two he practices, one of them he doesn't do individual, whatever the routine was the last few years, knock on wood for him, he's remained relatively healthy through the course of the season. He's been pretty fresh at the end of the season. But these reps are all important. My thing with him for years has been, yes as a 14-year vet, any player I've had that gets up in years, they still need work. Everybody does. Every position. Great basketball players still go out and shoot free throws. They still practice, you still have to practice. You just have to limit the amount of exposures you give them and the amount of pounding that their body takes. And that's all we try to do."
Does it ramp up more once pads come on and that's where you really kind of get going?
"Yeah, obviously the ramp up has value from a league standpoint, as far as getting guys transitioned back in. I think it has value too, the less you do in the offseason, the more you need to do preseason. As our strength coach says, it's a moving target right now as far as how to actually do this thing. Because it's changing. And then if they go to two preseason games, it changes the whole dynamic again. So, there's just a lot to it. So as far as getting any of the guys ready, everybody is unique. It's really cool. It's cool because it's different, right? All of a sudden now, [OL] Jon Feliciano versus [OL] Dominick Puni versus this guy. You have all these different guys and how do I get them all ready to go and give them what they need to be able to be ready to play, yet keep them healthy? Which is our number one priority, which is to make sure you have availability of players, but at the same time prepare them to play a style of football that's very physical, fast, the way we do things. And it's a challenge."
RB Christian McCaffrey said yesterday that RB Jordan Mason has improved a ton since Christian first got here. We've always seen that Jordan's a good ball carrier, but there's so much more to playing running back. Where have you seen the improvements with Jordan?
"Yeah, all of the above. He's become a better ball carrier. He was just such a hard running, strong, physical, tough guy that he gained yards, sheer-willed himself in the yards. Now, he's understanding the playbook better. [Running backs coach] Bobby Turner coming back into the building has been, not that anything was wrong with [former assistant head coach/running backs] Anthony Lynn, it's just that he and the two guys have clicked, so that's really helped. And then he's just matured as a player. He's had a chance to run more routes. He's had a chance to watch Christian run routes. It's a huge benefit to not only be coached well, but to have a guy that's premier at doing it and go like, 'Oh, I can see how that's done a little bit better. And it's a guy that I'm right here with, and I know the guy.' So it's helped him in every facet. He's really taken off. It's really exciting to see."
How much do you actually make out of one-on-ones?
"I don't. I get really mad at one-on-ones. Not that I don't, guys don't like them because they're saying that it's unfair. Yeah, I get that it's unfair. I get mad because I didn't realize that front office and media, like in Miami in 2004 when I was there, all of a sudden there would be a tally in the next day's paper of who won and who lost the one-on-ones. And the guys were furious. If I threw somebody out there for three extra reps and say, 'Hey, you need to work on X, Y, or Z' and they'd get beat, they'd go 'Coach you just,' and then we're yelling. It was ugly. Anyway, my thing is, you go there to work on something. One-on-ones are a great opportunity and a huge disadvantage for you. I don't care if you get beat every day for three weeks, you're working on something, right? Certain guys have weaknesses and they're going to go work on that weakness and they may get just get pounded for a while because they can't get it. And then they say, 'Well, I have to survive the drill now.' Don't survive the drill, get better. Who is keeping track of, 'oh, [DL Nick] Bosa beat Trent, or [Jacksonville Jaguars DL Arik] Armstead killed this guy. Or [OL Aaron] Banks can't block anybody in one-on-ones.' And you know, some guys aren't very good in one-on-ones, but within the setting of an offense or protection, they do a heck of a job. And yeah, they may show up every now and then in a one-on-one, but at the end of the day, it's more of a thing for me to work on it. It's hard to get the rest of the building to understand that, not get them to understand, but it's the only really live work that you get to see. So you should place some sort of stock in it. But it shouldn't because you have no idea what I've told the guy I want him to work on that day. And you're like, 'Oh God, he stinks.' And yeah, he stinks, because he's working on it. Yeah. He's has to get better."
What was your initial plan if you look at the two guard situations? You mentioned Feliciano and Puni, that leaves OL Spencer Burford as your apparent first stringer. How do you look at that right now as far as what you want to see?
"Yeah, you can tell it's great. It's hard. It's not like we're going to be able to just, I think say, 'This job belongs to, Jon, or this job belongs to Spencer, or this job belongs to Puni or whoever.' By the time this all shakes out, who knows may be the right or left guard at the position. I think Banks is set. That right guard spot, I'm not going to say it's like a wide open competition, but it's going to be interesting to see because there's three good players all, with different things that they do well, and different dynamics to the whole thing. Do you really want, even if Puni is the best player, is that the guy? Do you want him out there, opening day, Monday Night Football against the Jets? If he's the best player you do, but those are bright lights. Whereas opposed to Spence and Jon, who have done it. So there's that whole dynamic. And then it's just who's playing best, who's playing well. You have to look at Jon Feliciano as an aging player to say what's best for him, in regard to trying to make it to, hopefully there's a Week, 18, 19, 20. If there are those weeks at the end of the year, then how do you get him there and what does that look like this time of year and into the season? Same thing with Spence and Puni, it's all the same. So it's a kind of a fluid situation right now. And that's good to have. Unfortunately, there's not as much time to develop guys or have a competition, but I think it's good."
What's unique about Puni? What does he bring?
"He's a strong, big body. He just has a lot, he's no bigger than most of them, but he'll set the pocket real well. He plays with great anchor. He's extremely intelligent. He's really a good player. He's a special guy and he's just not done the position for very long. And with our system, it's a little bit of a change for him. So there's going to be a learning curve, but he's got some real stuff to him. A lot of our guards in our system, they tend to be quicker. That's where Banks is a great advantage. He is. Those bigger guys inside do help."
Burford took the blame after the Super Bowl for missing the block or missing the assignment on Kansas City Chiefs DL Chris Jones. What can a mental mistake like that do or how has he bounced back from that? What have you seen from him?
"Oh, it's brutal. One of my favorite lines, I remember in coaching meetings over the course of my life, we've had coaching meetings and you're like, 'Oh, it's probably not going happen. Maybe one or two times it shows up, oh, well.' 'I'm glad you're okay. It shows up once or twice, you tell me when it's going to show up and I'll be okay with it if it doesn't show up in a Super Bowl in overtime on second down, with a play that could have been a potential big play.' You don't know when it's going to come up. When it occurs has huge ramification. It weighs on you. Every single thing that I did the night before the game of the Super Bowl to talk to my players, to prepare them that week, to get them ready to go, on the sideline. We pick this game to not play our best game, but it happens. It's a game. You go out and you go play it. And we didn't play very well. And he makes that mistake. I struggle with it. It's my fault. I prepare him to play. It's my job to get him to do it. And yeah, it's my fault. And he didn't have it down. Banks missed a similar thing earlier in the game. Nobody talks about that one. It was a pressure, and I think he got the ball out, but it wasn't covered good enough. Or if it was, they didn't get it because if they don't get it, I can't just say their fault, not mine. Heck no. I'm responsible for those knuckleheads and if those knuckleheads don't do it right? I'm the knucklehead, I'm the guy that's not doing the job right. I'm the guy that has to get them to do it, but I can promise you as much as it weighs on me, it weighs on him more because he's the one with the bright light on him. Nobody took the camera over to me and said, 'There's the idiot that didn't get him prepared properly.' It's hard. And coming back from that has been hard. And the conversations with him at the end when he came in my office, after the game, it was hard. It matters. This guy doesn't just go, 'Oh, missed my assignment.' No, I mean, it's a once in a lifetime opportunity. You don't know. And so yeah, it was tough on all of us and tough on him in particular, but he's been great. He's come back, bounced back well, and he's done a good job. And I love the guy. He's doing everything right to hopefully fix a lot of those things that went wrong."
You mentioned last year when Feliciano got here, that sometimes you don't know what a veteran can do in your system until you have him in the system. OL Chris Hubbard was brought in as an 11-year guy, he was taking some left tackle reps yesterday. Do you think he could make the transition here?
"Yeah, I'll say this, you see things on tape, there's little tiny things you'll see that, you'll see the transition. You'll say, 'Oh, I can see this in him, or I can see this in this guy.' And you'll say, those are things that translate to our system. Now will he do it consistently in our system? I saw things with Feliciano in certain parts of the game. Hubbard, you see it too because Tennessee did have some similarities. There were some similarities. You could see more of what we do in Hubbard. And then here's the catchall, [Tennessee Titans OL Dan] Brunskill was there and Dan Brunskill is a [head coach] Kyle Shanahan favorite. And so, if Brunskill gave him the check and said, 'This guy can do it for you guys.' Kyle was like, 'Yeah, well Brunskill says we can do it. I don't care what you say, this guy's playing for us.' So Danny said the guy was actually really good at it. And he felt was a good transition. Even though he didn't exactly coach him in Tennessee, like we coach him. Dan felt like the guy could make the transition. And so whatever I thought, went backseat to Brunskill, but we think the guy can do it."
You've been doing this for a little while when you come into training camp and you see this group of guys. What do you see that's different from the groups that you've coached in the past?
"Every year is different. That's what is so great about it. No matter what, Kyle always talks about previous years, and I'm always, I get it. There have been a lot of people who have been here a long time, but a lot of these guys have, it's just every year's a new dynamic. What I like about this group of guys is, I think we've got a couple young guys, these guys that have been fringe guys, it's really exciting to see how [OL Nick] Zakelj, [OL Ben] Bartch, Puni, [OL Jarrett] Kingston, the other guys down the line. How they're going to develop. What happens with our veterans? How does [OL] Brandon Parker, do we squeeze a little more out of him or out of Hubbard? Does [OL] Jake Brendel continue? Does [OL Colton] McKivitz take a step? There's just so many little things within this. Banks is coming into a huge year for himself and his future. And all these things weigh on a guy. That's why it's a different dynamic all of a sudden. Feliciano, they're all in a different place than they were a year ago. So each guy presents a different challenge. I'm excited because I like that. On the upside, there could be a huge great group of guys that we got from kind of humble beginnings and then there's a chance they don't. So all that puts a lot of pressure. But it's really exciting to be able to see how they all play out. And it's really fun to watch them all develop and see the pace with which they do it. And it's what makes my job cool because it changes. It's constantly changing every single day."
