Niners Nation
Who will be Kyle Shanahan’s QB reclamation project next year? 49ers mailbag (paywall)
“The 49ers were sniffing around O’Connell before the 2023 draft. He’s still got one more year on his rookie contract, and the Raiders would have to release him for him to be available. But if they did, he’d make sense for San Francisco.
A bigger fish would be Zach Wilson, who was drafted one pick ahead of Trey Lance in 2021 and who’s scheduled to be an unrestricted free agent. The 49ers took a long look at Wilson that year because they were shopping for quarterbacks. He’s currently in Miami under Mike McDaniel, which means he’s already familiar with the Shanahan system.
Lance and former 49ers starter Jimmy Garoppolo also will be free agents, but, gee, I don’t see a reunion in the future. After the recent 49ers-Rams game, I watched Shanahan shake hands with Sean McVay and start heading toward the 49ers’ tunnel. His path took him directly in front of Garoppolo, and I wondered if they’d bro hug or at least shake hands or even acknowledge each other. They did not — it was like two ships passing in the night…..The bad news: Cowing said a couple of weeks ago that he’s suffered three aggravations of the hamstring strain he got on the first day of training camp. He said every time he hit top speed, the issue would reappear.
The good news is that he feels he’s gotten on top of it this time, and he’s close to returning to practice. Maybe he starts practicing in Week 15?“
Kyle Shanahan previews 49ers-Panthers Week 12 matchup
“Yeah, of course. It wasn’t that I was adamant about that. You guys just asked a more detailed question and I think Grant [Cohn] said he was healthy because he saw him shooting hoops. What’s wrong with him because he is shooting hoops in there, even though you can shoot hoops in a wheelchair also. So I just answered why he wasn’t healthy. I mean, guys who can hit over 20 miles per hour all the time and then can’t hit 18 without feeling pain in their knee, that’s a sign that they’re not healthy..…We saw what we wanted to see for him last Wednesday. He looked like a healthy Ricky which is why he probably didn’t have pain hitting those GPS numbers and why I thought he looked real good in the game. I think it’s unfair to these guys, to me, to agree that they’re judged off of targets. We try to get quarterbacks who don’t throw to people covered. And covered doesn’t mean a man-to-man all the time. It means that there’s two zoning defenders on you. And so, if a zoning defender’s on one guy, then you move to the next guy and there’s no one under and you get completions. I can’t remember a time in that game where we went to Ricky and he was covered by the guy guarding him. It was...
