published on June 01, 2024 in celeb

Kawakami: Kyle Shanahan on the moment he knew Brock Purdy was his QB, searching for a 49ers title an

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — What the TV cameras and press conferences never really capture about Kyle Shanahan is how young and optimistic he can look and sound, even now, heading into his seventh 49ers season and not many months after suffering one of the toughest losses of his coaching career.

I sat down with him in his office just off of the 49ers’ practice fields on Tuesday, as players and staffers walked past his windows and Shanahan was getting ready for a meeting with his coaching staff to set up the first training-camp practice on Wednesday. He joked about seeming older these days, which is a product of the gray in his hair and the occasional moments of world-weary sarcasm and stern expressions in public settings.

But when you’re next to him for, oh, 45 minutes or so, Shanahan doesn’t seem anything like a sour, old guy. He bounces around in his chair, he kicks his legs up and down, his eyes widen and his voice booms when he’s making an emphatic point and his energy level is decidedly not in danger of depletion. A few years ago, he joked to me that sometimes he thinks he looks like “a skater kid” in public and that’s always stuck with me, mostly because sometimes it’s still true.

And what gets Shanahan bouncing and energized these days? He feels great about the roster he and John Lynch have assembled, he loves that the team has remained near the top of the NFL the last few years while rotating through three different starting quarterbacks, and he is particularly happy that Brock Purdy’s elbow has healed and he has been cleared fully for practice a little bit ahead of schedule and just in time for camp (though Purdy, sticking to his throwing schedule, won’t practice Wednesday because he threw the previous two days).

Again, this is just six months since the NFC Championship Game, when Purdy got hurt in the first quarter, backup Josh Johnson got hurt a little bit later and Jimmy Garoppolo and Trey Lance were unavailable, hand-delivering the Eagles a trip to the Super Bowl and the 49ers another offseason of angst. Shanahan was devastated after that game, which was the 49ers’ second consecutive NFC title-game loss and third time in three playoff trips they made it at least to that round but failed to bring home the Lombardi Trophy.

Shanahan said he really believes the 49ers could’ve won Super Bowl 54 but blew that fourth-quarter lead against the Chiefs. He knows just a few plays cost them the NFC Championship Game against the Rams in January 2022 and he knows that 49ers team probably would’ve matched up very well with the AFC champion Bengals that year. Then there was the injury calamity in Philadelphia six months ago.

“I think you sit there and you know how close you are as a group to having two (Lombardi Trophies), and that’s tough, because I’ve been in my life long enough to know how hard it is to get there,” Shanahan said. “Then I thought we were going to get there (the) next year again. And then the way the last game went.

“Yes, it’s hard. Yes, that’s my goal in life. Has been for a long time. But I’m also not setting my whole life on whether that’s going to make me happy or not. I know my personality, so I’d better be mentally strong with that. I do plan on being part of a team that wins one. I plan on trying to be in a situation where we have a chance to win one every year.”

That is the major point now. Shanahan and Lynch have not built this for the short term. They have a loaded roster that is quite expensive and will only get more expensive, but they’ve planned for that, too. If Purdy is good this season, they have so much talent on both sides of the ball that they should easily get back to the playoffs next January. And they should have another great shot to move deep through the postseason. That’s how the 49ers go on, from year to year.

“I strongly believe if we keep doing things the way we do it, that it is a matter of time,” Shanahan said. “But yeah, I wish we already had some (titles). But that’s also sports. You’ve gotta live with yourself in sports. There are ups and downs. And I think that’s what I have gotten better with in my 20 years (of coaching), where I don’t know if I could’ve handled that stuff early in my career. I used to always say, if you would’ve told me we lost a Super Bowl and blew a lead or something, I probably would be, ‘What, did I die the next day? Did my life keep going on?’ … And g–d— it feels like you are the next day. And usually for a couple months.

“But it’s been weird because you feel stronger the next season. You’ve gotta go through some soul searching and stuff, but you get there and realize, all right, I’m better now. Sucks that you don’t have the hardware to show that, but you know you’re better. You know your team’s better for it. You just keep going back at it. The place we are, the type of owner we have and the direction we’re going, I think good things happen to people that do things the right way. And we’ve been doing that. And hopefully, it’s a matter of time.”

Not long ago, Lynch was offered a huge contract to go back to TV and almost took it, but decided he couldn’t leave the 49ers and especially couldn’t leave Shanahan at that moment. Lynch seems more committed than ever to sticking with the team, at least until there’s a championship parade. I’ve always assumed that Shanahan would be coaching the 49ers for as long as Jed York wants him in the job, but I’d never specifically asked him about his future.

Until now: Kyle, can you see yourself walking away from this job or this profession and maybe going into TV or something in five years or so?

“I don’t know about for a TV job or anything; I don’t know about five years,” Shanahan said. “I don’t see myself coaching in the 60s. I know what it does to me.”

I asked: But don’t you feel like your dad was fine coaching into his early 60s?

“I feel like you get to a certain age, you can just get through it, ’cause he always seemed better at it,” Shanahan said. “But I don’t know. I want my organs to feel right in my 60s. And sometimes you tighten up for seven months and it doesn’t always feel quite the same. But I tell you what, no matter how much I’m like, God, I need a break, you take three weeks off and all of a sudden it’s like, it starts to be about all you can think about. All that stuff sounds good. Maybe one day you get fired and you have to take a year off. And then you learn, oh no, I don’t want to do this, I’ve got to go work. That’s what I want to do.

“But at my age — I’m 43, and I hope we can accomplish a lot here in the next 17 years. So we’ll see. I’m still young, though I don’t look like it always.”

Here are some other highlights from our conversation:

• Kyle, how worried were you during the offseason, especially when the surgery was delayed a few weeks, that Purdy’s elbow injury might keep him out for most or all of this season?

“There was never a time I didn’t think he would be cleared,” Shanahan said. “I never went into it, just talking to other quarterbacks who have been through this stuff, thinking, ‘All right, he’s not going to be able to play this year.’

“Now, we did have to postpone the surgery, I forget how long, because of some swelling and stuff and just that his doctor thought it’d be safer to wait. So that’s what made me think, all right, maybe (Purdy won’t be cleared until the) middle of training camp; will it be enough time to show that he’s ready to start Week 1? And we also had Trey coming off the injury. And that’s why the most stressful time probably was free agency because that’s when the unknown was. The timeline and when he was going to come back, if it was too early. That’s why it was so awesome being able to sign someone like Sam Darnold and then being able to get Brandon Allen right before OTAs started was unbelievable.”

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• The Purdy revelation happened so fast and so late last season that we didn’t really get much of a chance to ask Shanahan back then exactly what he saw in Purdy in last year’s OTAs and camp to give the seventh-round pick a roster spot. But just listening to Shanahan explain it now is a perfect way to understand why Purdy is the unquestioned starter, ahead of Lance and Darnold, who are competing for the No. 2 spot.

“What you noticed was, he didn’t mess around,” Shanahan said of Purdy’s early 49ers days. “Like, it was so decisive, what he did. He didn’t go in there and try to overly impress it with a first rep, like, ‘Hey, I’m going to get the big play.’ Whatever play was called, whatever the two reps were, he did that and it was like a machine. And by the end of OTAs, we’re like, ‘Man, this young guy is a machine. I don’t know if we’re ever going to be able to keep him on the practice squad ’cause he’s probably going to do good in the season.’ …

“Well, when we got into training camp and we started to go from, like, two reps to six reps for him, he was doing the same thing in those six reps. And within a few weeks, he needed to compete with Nate (Sudfeld) for that 2 spot. And once that started happening and he was doing the same thing in practice, I was like, ‘Damn, we’ve got to play him in the games more.’ And once he played in the games, it was so similar, the good and the bad, to what we saw in practice.”

The 49ers eventually ended up with a Week 1 QB room of Lance, Jimmy Garoppolo and Purdy. All sorts of mayhem happened from there, starting with Lance’s injury in September and then Garoppolo’s injury in December, but that was the Week 1 plan.

“I just remember all through training camp, Jed comes down a lot, asks how the quarterbacks are doing,” Shanahan said. “I would talk about all of them and I would always go to, ‘This Purdy guy’s doing great.’ I remember Brock got in for the first time against Kansas City (in a Week 7 blowout loss) and some mop-up time at the way end and threw a pick on the last deal. And I remember Jed going, ‘I thought you said he was really good.’ I was like, ‘Jed, that was the last drive, that wasn’t a good play.’ (Several weeks later,) Jimmy got hurt and then it was like, I remember Jed always saying, ‘All right, you’ve been saying how good this guy is. So now we’re going to find out.’ I was like, ‘Wait, whoa, whoa, that was in practice. We’ve gotta be patient.’

“And (Purdy) came in, he was the exact same in the games as he was in practice. I think that’s kinda what’s been easy for us as coaches, is that even though it wasn’t a lot, it was always consistent. … That’s why I don’t think you guys ever heard the players waver. ‘Cause they saw it in practice. And then what they saw it in games, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, hell yeah, we all knew this.’ But you’ve got to see it out there and keep it up every week. That’s why he never lost a game.”

• You could feel a shift in the organization after Purdy won his second start and his first road start, on a Thursday night in Seattle. He’d taken a shot to the ribs in the previous game and there was a serious question in the hours leading up to kickoff whether he’d play. But Purdy played. And won. Yes, something had shifted.

“That’s when I knew we had a dude,” Shanahan said. “Because of how good he had played I think the two weeks prior. But that game, I think he had broken ribs from a Sunday. That game was Thursday. I remember when he took his shot in pregame warmups he couldn’t throw because it was still hurting in that area. So he’s going into the locker room and I’m sitting in there going over the openers and I still don’t know whether he can throw or not as they’re waiting for (the shot) to kick in. So I’m about to go with Josh Johnson, who’s been here for like a week, or no, two days …

“But Brock’s like, ‘No, I think I can do it.’ And then watching him in that game, knowing how hurt he was and watching how he just managed it on ‘Thursday Night Football,’ and some of the plays he made to move the chains on third-and-1 at the end, scrambling, I knew we had a dude who was made up the right way. Who could handle the pressure and stuff. And we’d seen what he does just as a player in practice and the games. But it was more the make-up. And then just hang with him from then on out. It was proven. He got stronger with it.”

You could sense a shift in the 49ers after their Brock Purdy-led win in Seattle in Week 15. “That’s when I knew we had a dude,” Kyle Shanahan says. (Joe Nicholson / USA Today)

• More on how Purdy took this job from Lance in eight starts last season:

“And then he comes in and now you go off of what you see,” Shanahan said. “Now it’s just very simple football. And what he did week in and week out, each week, by the end, it wasn’t a tough decision. ‘Cause he had all the film there. It would be really tough if they did that in practice all the time and there was no game tape and you’re going to make this decision without him going through a real NFL game? No, I’m probably going to go with the guy we invested in more that we think has the higher upside before we got both. And I still don’t know what the right answer is, because I can’t see it all.

“What I can see is what Brock did in his games last year and people give him a lot of credit, they give our team a lot of credit. But I know how good he played. And I think anybody who really sits and watches it, whether it’s teammates, whether it’s our coaches, it was strong in the season but it got stronger in the offseason because what he put on tape was real. That’s what makes it easy, this situation we’re in.”

• Shanahan on Lance and Darnold’s chances of moving ahead of Purdy:

“Now Trey and Sam? They have the ability to do that stuff,” Shanahan said. “It is harder for them to do it in practice and to jump a guy we’ve seen do it in seven games like that. That’s the harder situation. But that’s the situation I’m happy about, though. Now maybe (Purdy) has a setback, maybe he’s rusty and stuff because of his injury. I don’t know. I don’t think he will be. I think he’ll get back to that point. And then these other guys can play, too. Maybe he does get an injury and Sam or Trey get an opportunity just like Brock did last year.

“All of this could happen to each one of them. I know the way that we all would’ve drawn it up because of how we spent our draft picks. And that’s the way it was going to go. (But) injuries happen. And when injuries happen, you don’t really lose your job because of injury but you give opportunities to someone else. And this guy who got his opportunity, came in and did stuff on film for me, for John, for all our players, that was as good as we’ve seen here. And he’s going to be real hard to beat out.”

• No good team has gone through as many QB contortions as the 49ers the last few years. It started with the concerns over Garoppolo’s injury issues and led the 49ers to trade three first-round picks to move up from their 12th spot to No. 3 in the 2021 draft in order to select a QB. It came down to either Lance or Mac Jones.

“We made the decision we were getting (a QB),” Shanahan said. “And we couldn’t wait ’til 12 because I believe if we would’ve waited ’til 12 I don’t think either of them would’ve been there. I know Mac went at 15 (to New England), but …”

Did Shanahan and Lynch think back then that somebody would’ve moved ahead of 12 to get Jones? Would New England have moved up from 15 to get him? “There’s three other teams,” Shanahan said. “Yeah, (he and Lynch believed that) very strongly. But we knew that was a risk wherever it ended up. We ended up going with Trey because what we believed he could do for our team and the upside of him and the person that we fell in love with, too. And when we did that, yeah, that’s a risk. But we (took) the risk on our team and our team was good. We just had to give him some time. And he got that time going into his second year, and then he got hurt.”

• What was Shanahan thinking for the entire second half of the NFC title game, when he was calling plays without a QB and the Eagles were storming out to a 31-7 lead? Well, a little bit about bringing Philip Rivers out of retirement.

“Whole thing I’m just thinking is, ‘Man, I hope Brock’s not as bad as they’re saying and what’s going to be our Plan B? Are we going to have to get Philip Rivers, someone like that, for the Super Bowl?'” Shanahan said. “Because that’s what I’m thinking. ‘Cause I didn’t think Jimmy was going to be ready and all I’m thinking is, ‘Man, I hope Brock is not bad as bad as they’re saying and someone like Philip Rivers is working out and ready to go here in two weeks because that’s still our plan.’ And when I accepted reality, it took me a while to get over.”

• Shanahan said he choked up at one point on the sidelines talking on the headsets near the end of the game and he choked up again speaking to the media afterward. On Tuesday he said it was a different emotion than some other painful losses.

“It was a little harder,” Shanahan said. “I don’t like to talk about it because I don’t want it to come off taking anything away from the Eagles. That team was really good. Both of us were. And that was going to be a battle. They could’ve won it and we could’ve won it. I’m not saying I’m guaranteeing we would’ve won. But we sure as hell believed we were going to. And we were excited for that game. And we felt really good about our game plan, coaches and players. We felt really good about the matchup. It was going to be a hell of a game. And to not be able to play that, to … just lose it that way, was a different thing to stomach.”

• Shanahan reiterated that Steve Wilks was his first and best choice to replace DeMeco Ryans at defensive coordinator because Shanahan wanted to stay with the 49ers’ four-man defensive front, which is what Wilks has been running in his previous DC stops.

“There were other coordinators that I really, really liked. Guys like Vic (Fangio), guys like Ejiro (Evero). Guys who I’d gone against, who were very successful and stuff. But I just love what we have built here and done here. So it was very important to me to build something that was based out of a four-down front that had a similar mindset as that. And some of the other guys I was interested in, it was a completely different switch-over. And so that’s why Steve was my first choice from the beginning, ’cause I knew that’s what he ran. Now it’s still different styles and stuff.

“The coolest thing was being able to keep my whole staff on defense, have him get with them, making them part of the interview, having him talk to them … it was just two days together to see if, hey, can you go in as a D-coordinator, kind of learn what these guys have been doing the last couple years, kind of depend on some of these guys like (position coaches Kris) Kocurek and Johnny Holland and (Daniel) Bullocks … ’cause they have all the experience, and be the coordinator and make it all your own and fine-tune it.

“I feel like that was exactly what my dad had to do in ’92 when he came here, took over for (Mike) Holmgren. He came here by himself. He was the only new offensive coach and he was the coordinator. And he had to depend on a lot of people, but I thought in that ’92 year, when it was all said and done, they were 14-2, I think Steve (Young) won the MVP, they had a great offense. It gives you a chance to make it better.”

Wilks has been a pretty heavy blitzer in the past, and it definitely sounds like Shanahan is ready for more 49ers blitzing than Robert Saleh and Ryans called in the previous six seasons.

“You can’t let offenses get comfortable,” Shanahan said. “You’ve gotta win the game. The hardest way for an offense to get people open is versus seven people in coverage, when those four people can get to the quarterback. But if that’s not always the case, you have to mix it up. And I think DeMeco did a lot of five-man rushes, which is a blitz, he just didn’t send the linebackers as much. …

“I do think we have ‘backers who can blitz, though. And I think that’s kind of what Steve has talked about. I remember going against them and how much (former Panthers linebacker) Thomas Davis would blitz. It was just crazy. I mean, every time … I don’t even know if it was a blitz. If he was in man coverage and we flinched, he was in the backfield. So there are some different styles to that. I like to mix that stuff in. And I know I like his aggressiveness with it.”

After a stint as Carolina’s interim head coach last year, Steve Wilks takes over as the 49ers’ defensive coordinator. “I like his aggressiveness,” Kyle Shanahan says. (Grant Halverson / Getty Images)

• Classic Shanahan story, on a couple trips to Warriors games with his son and some interactions with Klay Thompson, who, Shanahan should know, is a huge fan of the free-spirited hoopster Jackie Moon in the movie “Semi-Pro”:

“I met Klay the year before with my son Carter, up in that restaurant at the stadium,” Shanahan said. “We were having a lot of fun, it was a late-night game and I kept calling him Jackie Moon for some reason. His style just reminds me, just his swag is like that a little bit to me. It was funny. And Carter was so embarrassed, my son. And we were sitting on the court for the Kings game (Game 7 of the Warriors’ first-round series), second row and I’m like, ‘Look at Klay over there.’ And they’re at the opposite corner. I was like, ‘Klay’s the man, we should say hi to him.’ And he’s like, ‘Dad, he thought you were so silly, you embarrassed me so much calling him Jackie Moon.’ … And then they did national anthem. And after that, we’re watching Klay and he goes running across the whole court … runs all the way up. I’m like, he’s coming over here. He comes all the way up to me and Carter and looks at us … and he (fist-)pounded me and Carter and then he left. And Carter’s jaw was open. I was like, ‘I told you he liked Jackie Moon!'”

The TK Show: Go to Tim Kawakami’s podcast page on Apple, Spotify and The Athletic app.

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(Photo: Michael Zagaris / San Francisco 49ers / Getty Images)

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