The two most important men running the San Francisco 49ers are both homeless right now.
A month away from free agency and the NFL scouting combine, Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch have setup shop at the Marriott Hotel. While both men long for the company of their families, the head coach isn’t complaining one bit about the situation.
“It’s probably a good thing they are not going to be out here for two months, or whenever their spring break starts, because it’s time I do need to spend up here and play some catch up,” Shanahan said Friday on KNBR. “We’ve started about a month behind everyone else.”
Tasks Shanahan confirmed are on his plate right now: Finalizing his coaching staff, teaching those new coaches his schemes, evaluating and grading the current 49ers roster, evaluating and grading free agents. Those are the big projects, but they aren’t the absolute biggest.
Until the San Francisco 49ers figure out a proper solution to the quarterback position, they won’t be a competitive football team. If you don’t have a quarterback in 2017, you don’t have an ID to get into the club. You aren’t a real football team.
The good news? Shanahan recognizes the significance of prioritizing quarterback and almost certainly won’t waste another year with Colin Kaepernick and Blaine Gabbert. Unlike former GM Trent Baalke, this position is going to be addressed head on. Shanahan told KNBR he’ll spend multiple days watching film of trade rumor players — Kirk Cousins and Jimmy Garoppolo — free agents, and eventually the draft.
“It’s too important of a position to make an impulsive move,” Shanahan said. “When you make a decision on a quarterback, you don’t want that to be just a short term fix. You want to make a commitment to somebody. And in order to do that, you better make sure you’re on the same page with everyone else, you’ve put the time in, you’ve talked to people who have been with these guys. There’s a lot that goes into it.
“It’s not just busy work you can knock out. You’ve really got to be in the right frame of mind, you’ve got to watch it closely, you’ve got to have discussions. And then on top of it, we’re also trying to put together a scheme and teach some of these new coaches some things that we’re doing. All this stuff adds up.”
In an interesting paradigm, Shanahan said he will be focusing mostly on free agency while Lynch and the personnel staff whittle down the draft board. The 49ers could realistically make their bold move at quarterback before the NFL Draft, ending any speculation that Deshaun Watson or Mitch Trubisky would be taken with the No. 2 overall pick.
While Shanahan obviously didn’t rule out selecting a quarterback with the second overall pick, he hinted that it’s just too dangerous to whiff that high in the draft if you just aren’t sure.
“The most important thing is to get a good player who is going to play for you for a long time. And that’s as simple as it gets,” Shanahan said. “Everybody wishes and hopes you can take that quarterback who is going to be there and be that franchise guy for the next 15 years. But that’s just what you hope for. You don’t draft people based off of what you hope. You’ve got to draft people based on what you truly believe is the right answer. Knowing no one has all the right answers. There’s nothing that’s going to guarantee you’re going to be right.
“But to me, you’ve got to think very clearly. What I mean by that is you can’t just hope for stuff and wish things to happen. You’ve got to look at each situation differently. You’ve got to see what’s available. If there is a quarterback there that we believe can match that criteria and we believe he can be a franchise quarterback for us, then of course, you don’t hesitate on that. But if you don’t see that, and there’s other good players, if there’s a pass rusher, if there’s a linebacker, if there’s an O-lineman — whatever it is. You need to get the best player possible who you think will help your team the next 10 years.”
Unless Shanahan appears again on KNBR, we likely won’t hear from him again until the combine in Indianapolis.