49ers Head Coach Kyle Shanahan Thread | Page 5900

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:

Originally posted by Chance:

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
This is the problem with this guy.

* Pick DE. Still need a DE. Mykel Williams. Not a pass rusher and now injured.
* Pick WR. Still need WR. Aiyuk - Head Case. Ricky "GLASS" Persall. Stribling now picked. But we keep piking WR, WR, WR. Anybody see the problem?
* Coverage S. Who needs one? Ignore button.
* Offensive line. Who needs it? Late picks or ignore button.

But lots of fancy shifts and motions. Unfortunately it won't overcome this. This doesn't even include the 3 first rounders for Trey Lance. Which was a catastrophe. Just too many holes in the armor. If all you bring is shifts and motions and are a catastrophe at everything else that's a big problem.

A little early in the day to be hitting the sauce.

No sauce involved in this. Just cold hard truth about Shany and his failed regime. You will never win like this.

Don't know about sauce but you do understand that's not how drafts work right? Things change. Teams draft BPA(or at least what they consider that to be)

Injuries aren't something you can project. Especially when you go out of your way to draft guys who don't have injury history anymore. Pearsall never missed a game in college. Mykel only dealt with one injury and played through it unlike many others who would've missed a lot more time.

Mykel was drafted because they felt he was the BPA and gave them versatility on the DL and to start gave them an edge who was going to improve a terrible run defense - he did that in a big way until his injury. How about the fact that Bryce Huff retired from football? Pretty obvious why we have a need there if we keep losing players either via FA or retirement.

Evans and Kirk are both old. We selected Pearsall when we had what we figured was a prime Brandon Aiyuk and still at least expected a year or two of Deebo. Were the Seahawks hitting the sauce when they drafted JSN even though they already had DK and Lockett?

Coverage S was a need. I'm sure who they had available wasn't a good enough fit for them to pull the trigger. I have no doubt that if Thieneman was there at 27 we'd draft him.

All that complaining and the team just went 12-5 despite missing some of our best players and going into the season expecting Aiyuk to contribute. Clearly those fancy shifts and motions are doing something right. Not sure why you're even bringing up Trey Lance 5 years later. We've moved on, you should try it.

Originally posted by KiwiM:
Excellent interview

Transcript (skipping the Brady roast section)

RE: Now is kind of your post-draft, you are going to get your guys in, this is the time of the year you can ease into things, would you say?
KS: Yea, this is my favorite time of year because your done with the draft. I mean, college, we don't watch a lot of college football until you get read for the draft. I'm really starting in February to do college football so much all the way to the draft. And when the draft is over, I can put it all aside and now its all NFL ball. It times up when all the players are back with phase 1, about to be into phase 2. We get to meet with them in the morning when they are working out. In the afternoons, we're kind of on our own as coaches. It's a little bit more relaxing. There's not a lot of pressing needs except getting ready for your meetings the next day, which you are only allowed to do for an hour and a half anyways with our rules. If I was a golfer, I would be golfing more in the afternoons, right now. But I suck too bad at that. So, I'm mainly hanging out with the family.

RE: That's pretty cool. We saw in the draft room there were some kids sitting behind you and John Lynch and Jed York, a couple times. Your kids? Whose kids were they?
KS: No, those were Jed's kids. Future owners. They can do whatever they want.

RE: Future owners. You're probably right. I get it. They can do it... whatever they want. Okay. Kyle Shanahan here on The Rich Eisen Show. Our radio audience has returned. I've got the head coach of San Francisco, Kyle Shanahan, on the program. How much do you personally grind tape leading into the draft?
KS: A ton. I feel like I'm always playing catch-up. That's what [John Lynch] and his whole department do all year. So they got a really good idea in January when the season ends. They kinda re-evaluate it after all the pro days, the combine, and everything. They don't change that much because we try to base everything off the film. But there are certain things guys can do to hurt themselves or help themselves after that. For me, I pick up that tape for the first time in February. I don't usually know who the Heisman is or anything like that at that time. I've just been 100% NFL ball.

It's hard to catch with all those guys so you have to depend on a lot of other people. One way we do it here, we give all the position coaches the responsibility to make highlight tapes on everybody. I tell them they have to watch a lot of game tape to make those highlight tapes. Then I study their highlight tapes so I can study 200 people. I always tell them that if I don't like their highlight tape, then I'm not going to watch anything after. So those guys have got to put a lot of work into their highlight tapes. If they can't impress you with that, I always say "what's the point in watching more". I would love to watch more but that's the way to get it done in a two month timeframe. And when you do get it done, I definitely don't want to look at anymore college ball until next February. The NFL is a little bit more fun for me to watch. A little bit more that I'm used to. It pertains to what we do. But the draft is everything so you gotta make sure you put time into it.

I will say, it's hard over two months when you gotta watch all those guys and you might only get 4-8 guys. It's not like you get your choice of everybody. Sometimes you watch people, you fall in love with them, and it just breaks your heart. The more you watch them, you realize "this guy is just way too good. There is no chance we're gonna be able to get this guy." So you kinda get worked up about it. You are like "damn, why did anyone lead me on like that?" Then you just gotta wait to see who falls to you.

RE: Sure. And you and John willingly got out of the first round, twice. Sat in the cat-bird friday night seat picking first and chose De'Zhaun Stribling out of Ole Miss. What did you see on that sizzle that you saw from this kid that said "this is the one we're gonna take" in a deep wide receiver draft of everybody who you would choose from that position?
KS: It was a long process to get there. There was a lot of good receivers in the draft. We weren't for sure going to go receiver either. We knew we would like to but there was a lot of positions we would like to. We targeted everything at 27. You always have an idea of who might be there and who you are hoping to be there. There was a couple guys we hoped could be there but we knew there was a possibility they wouldn't. There was a couple guys we weren't going to move for. We thought if they fell to 27, it didn't matter who was on the phones, we were going to turn [their draft card] in right then. But we had a feeling, odds were, those guys weren't going to be there. That's happened to us a number of times. Usually when you are at the end of the first round, there is not always 32 what you would grade as "first round picks". You can find guys in the sixth round who end up being some of the best players in the league. It's just not as consistent, so that doesn't always make it right. Just what a guy is truly graded on, there is rarely 32 guys. We knew if those guys didn't fall, we were kind of expecting we would trade back, which we were hoping we could trade back to 30. We had some other things in where we knew we could trade back twice. Those fell out right when we were on the clock at 30 but then another team came in and gave up the chance to fall back to 33. That's kind of what we were hoping for. Our first goal was the guy we wanted would fall to 27. But we got out second goal. That was to trade back twice, accumulate some more picks, still get the guy. We would have taken Stribling at 30 if we had to pick, but to get to 33 and still get the guy we wanted.

The thing I was most nervous about going into the draft is that we only had 6 picks. We traded the third for Osa from Dallas. So we had a first-round pick, second-round pick, and we had four fourths. We had six picks going in there and we felt the strength of this draft was really the second round until the end of the third. And we only had one pick there. So I was really concerned going into it. I also felt like we needed to add more than 6 players. Not necessarily for this year, but also for next year. All the stuff is tied together. On how many free agents you lose. Things like that. I was worried that if we were going to get players that we were targeting, we were going to use some of our fourth-round picks to come up. The way I was looking at it was "we're going to need more than 6 players over these next two years. We might end up with only 4 in this draft." What was such a success, I thought was, we had 6 picks. We were able to move around a bunch and at the end of the day, we added 8 players when I was nervous we would only add 4. I think we added 8 players who all have a very good chance of making our team. And on top of that, we added a sixth-round pick next year which I think is huge because we didn't have one. That's something we'll want next year and it's also something that's used a lot before the trade deadline if we need to do that. Just to have that gives us some ammo to improve our team this year if need be.

RE: I appreciate you being so open on the process here because I don't know if you are aware but Bang-Bang Niner Gang is filled with makeshift Daniel Jeremiah's, Mel Kiper Jr's, and Mike Mayock's. A couple picks that jumped out was the one we just discussed. Then you took the first player who was not invited to the combine, although he flashed every single time Indiana was running the ball in winning a National Championship, in Kaelon Black. Why do like him and take him third on your order here in the third round?
KS: We thought he was the... trying to think of a way to word this. We had him as the second rated back on the board. That's just our evaluation of him. Right or wrong, that's our evaluation. Then you gotta decide where he's gonna, where you think he's gonna go. I think that's the hardest thing with this league. You got a guy who isn't invited to the combine. What does that mean? Maybe that means he's going in the sixth round. But then you evaluate him and you are like "man, I think he's a third-round running back." You're like "he's not going in the sixth round because he wasn't invited to the combine." That's what we were guessing. "Well, let's put him as a sleeper in the sixth round." Which we do with a lot of guys. And we've had a lot of success with some of those dudes. Then you start to watch the whole draft and you start to watch all the backs, and evaluate all the backs together, this wasn't as deep of a draft as years past for running backs.

When you look at it all and you take a census of scouts, of coaches, it's a whole process. You start to get to April and the majority of our place is ranking him up there. It only takes one other team to look at that way. If someone else has them as their second back, you are gambling that they aren't going to go up and take him as the second back right away. You think they are going to try to do the same thing. "Everyone is going to look at this as a fifth-round back. Let's take him in the fourth." Well, by the time the draft came, we feel everyone's looking at this guy like a fourth-round pick. So if everyone is looking at him as fourth-round pick, man, if we want him, I'll take him at 90 in the third. We'll be alright, everyone hating on us and judging that. That doesn't mean you are right. To me, when it's said and done, they all end up about 50-50. But when you sit there and you truly believe he's going to be a fourth-round pick for the league and you take him at 90, what's the gamble there? "Hey man, this will look right if you we take him the fourth round, so let's wait 12 more picks." Well yea. That would be awesome. But I've done that so many times in 22 years and then he goes 2 picks before you. And you're like "man, why did we try to get cute? It was close enough."

Kinda the same thing happened with Stribling, too. We got introduced to him as like a late second-round pick when you are first looking at him. I always say, you evaluate receivers as a first-round pick and then you find someone in the third-round who you know is a third-round pick based off of consensus. Height, weight, and speed. How the league is viewing them. Maybe his stats. Whatever it is. The media attention. Then you are like "alright, do I want to take this guy in the first-round? Or do I want to take this guy later? Man, I would much rather have this guy at the end of the second than this guy at the end of the first." One, I might think he's better. Two, you can get him later. And that's how it started out with Stribling because that's how he was advertised. Then the more we watch him, the more like it's not just we like him because his value is better later, we actually like him more than a lot of the guys who will be taken at the end of the first-round. That's similar to what I said with the running backs. So then you gotta go into that "alright... well, everyone in the league did view him for the end of the second. Why is that? Maybe because his stats weren't good transferring to Ole Miss his last year? Starting out at two other schools, that you could get a little missed in the process?" But someone who gets put at the end of the second and gets stronger and stronger the more you coaches evaluate him. The more scouts evaluate him. The combine. The pro day. You know he's getting stronger. There's rumors between league circles, not media, that some people have him as the top receiver on their board. Nobody is going to say that because if everyone knows they are your top receiver and everyone thinks they are going at the end of the second, you are going to keep that a secret and you are going to surprise everyone and take him at 40. So that's probably, and I'm just guessing, like six teams goal in the draft.

We're sitting there at 33. We've already traded back twice and picked up all these picks. Now we gotta sit there and debate. "Man, do we want to go back to 40? Do we want to go back to 39? We think we can get him there." You can base it off a perception but based off our evaluation, and me knowing, and a lot of people knowing how other people look at receivers, they have this guy ranked. "Man, I think there's at least a 50% chance he's going before 40. Do we want to sit and find that out?" Then you just got to evaluate what that is. If that does happen, where are we going and how does that look? What was cool about having the pick the second day, we could discuss all that stuff for all Friday and we could think and we could hear stuff. I mean, all the media guys call around the league and they talk to people who everyone promises they're not going to share any secrets. But people aren't good at that. So, you start to get an idea like, "no, this guys name is very hot and people are all trying to get this dude. They're just trying to 'when can they get them?'" And there is a lot of times that that stuff... like the media is always going to do what they do. They are right a ton of the time and we listen to that a ton of the time. But there's always these guys that's like, "alright, the media has set this guys a second. Where can we got steal them?" Then you got to decide whether you want to risk that or not. And the risk is no, we're not going to wait and watch him go at 38 and us be pissed and then tell everyone we're arguing with, "told you he was going before 40. Told you he was going before 58." Now let's just take that dude at 33 and have everyone hate us, but get a few texts from people from around the league be like "man, I can't believe you took that guy. I thought he was going to be there." It just is what it is. You'll see who is right. You got to live with it but you do the best you can.

RE: I love that. In the two minutes I have left, what was it like? You were the first-year head coach in your first draft. What was it like calling George Kittle to say you're on the 49ers? What was that call like?
KS: It was awesome. Kittle was such a different... I mean, Kittle I think has always been him, but when Kittle came in this league, he didn't show his personality like he started to in year two. That's all I'll say. Year one, he had no wristbands, no tattoos, a dorky haircut. He wasn't Kittle yet. And I remember him coming in week four and he was hurt, but was telling everyone he was healthy. I tried to have a honest conversation with him as a rookie. I'm like, "dude, we know you're hurt." And like, "dude, you don't have to talk to me like I'm 50 years older than you and like however you talk to your Pop Warner coach or however you've been trained and never tell your coach." I'm like, "dude, what's wrong?" Like, "I can tell you are hurt." And (Kittle says), "coach, I'm fine. Don't ask me anything else. I...I'm fine. There's nothing wrong." And I'm like "dude, I can't even talk to this guy." Then the second year, he's tatted up. He's breaking records. He can come in on his own, tell me exactly. And he started to let his personality out. But that first year, you weren't going to get much on the phone. You weren't going to get much at practice. And I think once he got comfortable and realized he could be himself, we've gotten himself every year since. And that's been nine cool years.

RE: Dude. One of my favorites. One of my favorite humans in 23 years with NFL Network. I love that guy. Do we see him week one? What do you think?
KS: I know there's a chance to. I know he's working his butt off to do it. I don't want to say he's on track, but I mean, I think that's what he's shooting for. And I don't put anything past Kittle. He works as hard as anyone. You know, this is my tenth year. It's his tenth year. It's really cool like having a few guys that have been here the whole ten years. Guys like him, Juice, there's not many of them. But they've been some of our best players here. Some of our best people. Guys I'll be close with the rest of my life. And I just keep telling Kittle, like, I mean, Jason Tatum got hurt in the playoffs. And he's looking pretty damn good now with his achilles. So, let's try to do something like that. And I know Kittle will. Kittle is too impressive of a talent and too impressive of a person. So, can't wait to get him back.