Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Niners’ QB problems leave Shanahan scrambling
PHILADELPHIA » Kyle Shanahan was about to reach the halfway point of his first season as an NFL head coach Sunday when he decided the best thing to do would be to prolong the agony.
So with 1:53 remaining in a 33-10 49ers loss to the Eagles, and with backup Birds quarterback Nick Foles on the field ready to drop to a knee ... Shanny the Younger called timeout.
Not sure his Super Bowlwinning father Mike ... or even Brendan Shanahan or Bishop Shanahan, for that matter ... would quite understand that move.
Perhaps he wanted to take the time to drop to a knee and pray for mercy?
“You have to be strongminded,” Shanahan said later of his 0-8 team. “You can’t get caught up in that record and all of those things that are something that we’re extremely disappointed in. To be sitting here and talking about it and dwelling on it and thinking of what’s happened in the past is not going to help us in the future.
“We’ve got to come to work tomorrow and we’ve got to look at this hard and find out where we can better.”
Actually, there’s little need for research. Shanahan and his fellow San Francisco film-goers know that the No. 1 priority in their ongoing search for a win is at quarterback.
The place where Brian Hoyer failed miserably this season.
The spot that C.J. Beathard occupied with dignity in Lincoln Financial Field Sunday, even if his performance (17 of 36, 167 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT) graded out as something far below that.
The job that once was the responsibility of one Colin Kaepernick. But hey, he doesn’t kneel here any more.
“We’re a young team, a new coaching staff,” Beathard said Sunday. “This is where you find out a lot about guys at this point. When you’re at 8-0, you’re having a great season. But the question is how do you act on the practice field when you’re 0-8? That’s where you find out a lot about guys. We have to look for leaders and move forward.”
If they don’t do that, they might as well take a knee on a lost season, and on a ridiculous streak of losses that count out at 22 of the last 23 for these Niner Nobodies.
Gone are the heady days of Jim Harbaugh’s 49ers, who won 12 games and advanced to the 2013 NFC championship game behind a young Kaepernick. The slow San Francisco decline was in full drop mode by the time he took a knee for a different reason midway through the 2016 preseason, protesting perceived police brutality and misdeeds, primiarly in African-American communities.
How that message had gotten muddled in the time since, and how Kaepernick’s career simultaneously dissolved has been somewhat of an epic sports tragedy, complete with a sub-plot starring Donald Trump’s un-presidential Twitter account.
The drama grew to such proportion that the 49ers decided to move on from Kaepernick at the end of last season, but the grand plan of Brian Hoyer as starter soon revealed itself to be unworkable for new coach Shanahan. So third-round draft pick Beathard, the kid with NFL bloodlines (longtime NFL GM Bobby Beathard is his grandfather) was handed the keys to this directionless team. Eight games. Eight losses. And Colin Kaepernick, who has gone unsigned at every NFL turn in 2017, filed a grievance earlier this month claiming NFL owners have colluded against him. According to a Kaepernick attorney, he’s also been excluded from meetings to discuss player protests and air issues between the league owners and “The Players Coalition,” co-founded by Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins.
“I can’t speak for him,” Jenkins said of Kaepernick. “I can tell you what I’ve been doing, what I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t want to speak on his behalf . ... Obviously there’s been a lot that’s happened over the last yearand-a-half, and now there’s a lot of speculation. A lot of that is pushed off onto other players to try to answer.
“I don’t think it’s our place to answer, or fair for us to have to answer that.”
Meanwhile, the unfair fate of an historic period of San Francisco football incompetence has fallen hard on the rookie head coach and rookie quarterback.
For Shanahan and Beathard, there is no one to grieve to except themselves.
“I thought we showed a lot more fight this week,” Beathard said, referring to a 40-10 loss the previous Sunday to Dallas. “As crazy as it sounds, I thought the defense played their tails off and gave us a chance (against the Eagles), but obviously it stinks losing. It’ll never be easy. At the end you have to put it behind you and move on to the next one.”