This has to be one of the strangest feuds of all time.
Last week Corey Wootton, who played in the NFL for six seasons and is now an analyst for the Chicago Bears, hopped on KNBR and gave an interesting take on the Murph & Mac Show.
He said that the Bears would beat the 49ers, Justin Fields would outplay Trey Lance and that the 49ers organization and locker room didn’t “have faith” in Lance.
When Kyle Shanahan hopped on later that morning, Brian Murphy recounted Wootton’s take about the organization not being behind Lance to the 49ers head coach, who basically responded by saying Wootton was talking out of his behind.
“Um, zero,” Shanahan said of what he took from the comments. “That sounds like a fan talking and someone who really doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Not to insult a fan or anything, but there wasn’t anything substantial right there. That’s just reading headlines and trying to make that into a football opinion.”
The Bears won on Sunday, 19-10, in an extremely sloppy game at Soldier Field. In recent days, Wootton has used that result to take a victory lap on his prediction, while also slamming Shanahan’s play calling and his “arrogance”.
Here’s what Wootton said on the CHGO Bears Podcast earlier this week:
I’m on the radio station, and they asked me what the prediction is. I said ’21-10, the Bears are going to win. I said the rain is going to be a factor. I said Trey Lance is going to struggle, which he did. I said Justin Fields is going to outperform him’ and they thought I was absolutely crazy.
I said ‘They don’t buy into Trey Lance, there’s some conflict in the locker room, I don’t know if they buy into him.’
Then Shanahan comes on the show later on and says, ‘He don’t know what he’s talking about, he’s just reading into headlines.’ You know what Kyle, I was right. I predicted it. And if [Cairo] Santos made those two, I had the prediction completely right.
So the Bears got you. You talk about play calling, this, that and the other, the same thing that happened in the Falcons game. You abandoned the run game when you had the game on lock. Same thing you did in the second half, that’s why the Bears were able to get the dub.
It is [personal]. I don’t like his arrogance. I told you guys that. I feel he carries himself in a different manner and it rubs me the wrong way and it rubs a lot of people that played in the league the wrong way too.
What’s a bit confusing about Wootton’s take is that Shanahan took exception to the notion that the 49ers didn’t have faith in Trey Lance, something that wasn’t proven by the 49ers loss on Sunday. It seems reasonable that the 49ers head coach would be bothered by someone who isn’t in the locker room, and seemingly doesn’t have sources in the locker room, claiming to know how he feels about his QB. The Bears winning or losing doesn’t change that.
Wootton also said that Murph and Kerry Crowley “thought he was absolutely crazy” for his Bears pick, when in fact Murph enjoyed the prediction, saying they had him on to “stir the pot” and Crowley said he thought the prediction held some weight since Wootton was a former player.
To the victor go the spoils, however, and in this case the spoils are flexing after a Week 1 win.