Please listen to this Chip Kelly podcast. No, seriously.
Tolbert and Lund are starting to build quite a rapport with San Francisco’s head coach, who joined the pair on Tuesday. For being the leader of a 1-5 football team, Kelly was really open and gave candid answers.
Some notes:
-Kelly’s said his 49ers have a mindset and mentality to let big plays from opposing teams deflate them. It’s also the first time he’s used the term “growing pains” for his young team.
-Inside linebacker is a clear problem the team is trying to focus on this week. There were 21 missed tackles that led to 200 yards. Kelly broke down angling and the geometry of tackling, or leverage as they call it in the NFL. Kelly compared it to a trapping-press defense in basketball.
-Joking about if Oregon hung 312 yards on UC Davis, which led into a quick Pac-12 discussion about Tolbert’s Arizona Wildcats.
-The phrase of the week the 49ers coaching staff is using? “Learn to finish. We’ve got to finish plays, individual plays and individual quarters.”
-Kelly really broke down the X’s and O’s of some coverage problems on Justin Hunter’s TD, and about some of the 49ers’ man-to-man and zone concepts on defense.
-Without naming Pro Football Focus, Kelly questioned how these football sites hand out grades when they don’t know particular assignments for players. Relating to that, he said he didn’t really judge Kaepernick on his 2015 game tape because he didn’t know the play calls.