Wednesday’s end-of-season press conference ended with a tough but fair question for 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan. And Shanahan’s answer made it clear he didn’t particularly appreciate the question.
Here’s the relevant portion of the question: “When you go through a season and you have four quarterbacks get hurt, does it cause you as a coach any hesitation? They’re all different, but does it give you as the person who draws up the plays, any hesitation on how you’re protecting them? How they’re handled, what you do with them?”
“I think if you looked at the injuries, common sense would answer that question,” Shanahan said in response. “How have they gotten hurt? I’m sorry, Josh [Johnson] got a concussion when he hit the ground, so that’s the fourth one you’re talking about. I’m sorry our quarterback got his elbow bent backwards on a normal drop-back pass. I’m sorry, on a drop-back pass someone rolled up on Jimmy’s ankle. And then we have a dual-threat quarterback who got hurt running the ball. To throw all those four in that category. No quarterbacks got hurt when we had to hand it off the whole second half, so we can look into that.”
Let’s take a closer look at the elbow injury to Brock Purdy. As Shanahan drew up the play, tight end Tyler Kroft was assigned to block pass rusher Haason Reddick. Time and again, coaches design Os and Xs without regard to whether the X will badly beat the O.
That’s what pass rushers typically do to tight ends. But coaches still put tight ends in those positions. Which, in turn, puts quarterbacks in the difficult position of having a pass rusher in their face or, more specifically, crashing into their arm while trying to throw the ball.
Look, it’s not Shanahan’s fault that he’s had quarterbacks who are prone to injury. In 2018, Jimmy Garoppolo tore an ACL when he dropped a shoulder to challenge a defensive back at the sideline, instead of just getting out of bounds.
The best quarterbacks know how to protect themselves. But, at least as to the Purdy injury, Shanahan bears from responsibility for expecting a second-string tight end to impede the path of one of the best pass rushers in football to the quarterback.
