Niners Nation
The 49ers head coach believes the team is getting better on their special teams units, while acknowledging it’s difficult to improve from within
Some think firing the coach is the answer whenever there are mistakes. Under Kyle Shanahan, the San Francisco 49ers' special teams have been underwhelming, to say the least.
Firing Brian Schneider will not fix anything. Not much has changed since the team changed coordinators after moving on from Richard Hightower, another coach fans wanted to be fired.
On Wednesday, Shanahan was asked if he’s made any changes to his practice time or if anything has been different so that unit can get going during the playoff stretch:
“Yeah, it’s. We devote a lot of meeting time and practice time. We don’t double down on that, the time spent on it, because I feel like we do as much as we can. We have mixed a lot of guys in there.”
That’s a fact. The 49ers have played 54 different players on special teams this year. It’s hard to form any sort of chemistry or continuity if you’re constantly changing the personnel. Still, Shanahan believes they’re improving:
“We do feel like guys have gotten better. But it only takes one mistake to cost somebody, and it only takes one person. You look at the Seattle game that we had last time, if you go back and you watch all the film, I thought that was one of our chances to have our best special teams game of the year. We caused two turnovers, got both of them, only one counted with the replay stuff.
But we had one missed tackle on a big kick return, and then they had that second one, and you just have those two plays, and it can cost you a game. I do think guys are getting better and stuff, but we’ve got to make sure that we don’t make those dumb plays where we can cause a penalty, where we can cause a turnover, and those are the things that we’ve really got to clean up.”
The last time the 49ers played the Seahawks in Week 6, several “dumb” plays were made. That unit received a penalty but missed six tackles overall. Since then, they have cleaned up the missed tackles, as there were none in the previous two weeks.
Shanahan acknowledged how difficult it is to improve from within on special teams:
“It’s real difficult. You’ve got the choices you’ve got, and as guys get, right when you get comfortable with somebody and, you start out the year playing a lot of young guys, and you think they’ll get better as the year goes, and then some of your vets get hurt, and now those young guys are starters.
And so, that bumps other guys up and it hurts their development when they try to do both because they needed a lot more rep. But as they get more pressure on them for offense and defense, it’s tough. And you’ve got...
