The San Francisco 49ers are hard at work preparing for free agency and the 2017 NFL Draft, but the timing of their hiring process leaves them a step behind most of the rest of the league. They had their general manager and head coach figured out a week before the Super Bowl, with John Lynch hired, and Kyle Shanahan the worst kept secret the week of the Super Bowl. However, the timing of hiring Shanahan meant they could not get the two men together until after the Falcons season ended.
Since the Super Bowl, Shanahan and Lynch have been spending plenty of time together breaking down film, and figuring out what they want. The time together is important for coming up with free agent and draft targets, but as Shanahan put it in a recent KNBR interview, it also means they are getting on the same page.
The two men have known each other for some time, but have not worked together prior to this present situation. Shanahan’s and Lynch’s families remain in Atlanta and San Diego, respectively, with the two men staying in a Marriott near the 49ers facility. With nothing to do but go back to their hotel rooms, the two men, along with other recent hires have spent a lot of time watching film late into the night.
Here is a transcript of what Shanahan said in regard to his dynamic with Lynch:
It’s been great. We jumped into it right away. We’ve been watching a lot of film, we’re doing a lot together, we’re doing a lot separate. John and the whole personnel department, they’re going through the draft stuff right now. Me and the coaches aren't yet at the draft. We're watching our own players and free agents. We'll get to the draft, really starting in Indy. Then we’ll hit the draft hard for a month when we get back. Right now, John and his whole personnel staff are upstairs going through all the draft stuff, trying to set the draft board, so, when we get back from Indy, then we have some direction on what positions to watch, the order to watch it. There’s hundreds of guys in the draft and that’s what those guys sort through, and then they break it down for us position by position where they give our DB coach 30 DBs instead of 150. So, we can really isolate on the guys that they like, and we can start to rank them and start to really find out what direction we’re going to go in.
We also want to spend time together so we can get on the same page. John and I have known each other for a while, but we’re still trying to develop that working relationship — trying to see football the same way together. Every night, neither of our families are here, we both live in the Marriott, so we’re not in too much of a hurry to get home. Usually Adam Peters and Martin Mayhew and John Lynch, they usually come down to my office at night and we just spend a couple hours watching film together. Sometimes it’s our own guys, sometimes it’s other people, sometimes it’s free agents, it really doesn’t matter. We just try to put those hours in to develop that relationship. That’s how you learn — being together. It never happens the first day, but each time you do stuff and communicate, you start to know each other better, and know each other’s expectations, and how each one of us sees it.
Earlier this week, MMQB columnist Albert Breer wrote a detailed feature on John Lynch’s start with the 49ers. Breer wrote about Jed York wanting a strong alignment between his head coach and GM, with Shanahan providing a specifically defined vision for the team, and Lynch having a clear idea how to go about building that.
According to Breer, this past Tuesday saw Shanahan give, “a lengthy, detailed presentation for the scouts on what his staff would be looking for at each position.”
Following Trent Baalke’s departure, we heard reports of his problems communicating with the coaching staff, to the point where the coaches were left in the dark to some extent. We don’t know how much of that is people defending themselves by casting blame on Baalke, but given the former GM’s communication habits, it was not an entirely surprising revelation.
Now, the 49ers would appear to have a coach and GM in place who seem to be on the same page for how to move this rebuilding process forward. Plenty could change in the relationship, but for the time being, this is a good sign. We are slowly moving forward from the talk phase of this to the action phase. Free agency and the draft will give us a lot of insight into where things are going, but early reports like this provide some semblance of optimism. They have to actually find the right players for the system, but until they get to actual signing and drafting phase, we can take some optimism from this.