Chris Foerster emphasizes 49ers' ‘group effort' while Kyle Shanahan recovers

Interim Head Coach Chris Foerster speaks to the media at 49ers Training Camp on Sunday at Levi's Stadium.

Chris Foerster emphasizes 49ers' 'group effort' while Kyle Shanahan recovers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

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Chris, you've been doing this a while.

How many what do you wanna see on that first day, did you see today that you want to see?

Yeah, I'd, one of the bene- the benefit of breaking the guys down today, I said, "I just love this football team."

I love how hard they work, the energy, the effort.

I, by far, we have a reason to come out and practice tomorrow.

We got a lot more work to do.

But I really love the energy and, and the attitude of the guys when they come to work.

This is just, you know, from personnel all the way through, we just get a bunch of guys that love playing football, love practicing football, and they love being back here ready to get ready for another season, so it's fun to be out there with them.

Chris, can I ask you a question?

Chris, can you just kind of lay out how your responsibilities have changed maybe what you've added from last year?

It's really a group thing, you know, and, the title puts me, in this position and I was very, you know, grateful that John and Kyle, felt and, you know, some of the, some of the things I could take the lead on like this right here.

But there's other things, you know.

For example, you know, our, our team meetings, instead of me running every team meeting, we'll split up in offense and defense and Raheem and, and, and, and Clay will do things.

We'll have some team meetings where maybe other people, maybe we'll have Boyer lead one and, and, and cover different things.

Kyle is, one of his one of the greatest things he does is how he leads a team meeting.

He talks football, teaches the team football, teaches the team everything, you know, and, and w- that's gonna be more of a group effort than, than ever.

It's not gonna all fall on me.

So, you know, as far as certain, certain things, we'll all take a piece of and, and that's how this thing's gonna be done.

So truly, when John said what the release said, you know, that listed my name, but then said it's gonna be done with all the assistance.

Kyle mentioned this, like, practicing.

What does he need to do right now?

What is his presence on the field?

Is he Well, obviously, you know, Kyle Shanahan's an outstanding head coach and has been a great leader here and very successful and, and obviously him being on the field is awesome.

Everything Kyle does, I really don't know the, the whole progression of what he's trying to get done.

Obviously, he's trying to, you know, a little, do a little bit more every single day.

So whatever that involves between the doctors, the trainers, and Kyle, that's in there.

I really am not too familiar with how that's gonna go.

So wherever he is in his progression, he'll be trying to do, you know, a little bit of everything until he's back to normal.

And how do you guys communicate as far as what he wants to be done or something you're not thinking of, you know?

Yeah.

It was, and Kyle came in my office and goes, "Do what you wanna do, and if you don't wanna do it, delegate it."

So it worked pretty well, but we have such a strong, you know This thing, one of the benefits of being here as long as we have been is the thing has been set up very, very well as there's a good structure.

When you, when you do OTAs, you kinda set up the installation schedule, at least we have done this, I can't speak for everybody, where it, we have a, a seven-day install or I can't remember, six or seven, whatever, install one.

And so, and we practice that in OTAs, and then we come back and do it again when we get to training camp.

So literally, it's rinse and repeat when you get to camp what you did in OTAs.

So the thing's been set up.

And camp is, I don't wanna say it's on autopilot.

There's a ton that goes on.

There's adjustments that have to be made and all sorts of different things that happen.

But, but he's basically, you know, we, we, as a group, we kinda decide how we're gonna, you know, I look at things and say You know, like, I, I woke up this morning and thought, "What am I gonna do when we jump offsides?"

You know, Kyle sometimes repeats the play, sometimes we, you know, little J- there's a ton of little things that the head ball coach kinda does and that, that who's gonna do it now.

So we, as, as it comes up, we address it.

A little over a month ago in this scenario, right, but if you go into the off season and prepare for training camp, what changed in your process, if anything at all, when you had to, like, take over this role?

I just have to think about a few more things to do.

I still have to get my guys ready to play.

The offensive line obviously is a huge piece to this puzzle and us improving every single day and getting better up front.

So that's been my main focus all off season.

And when this comes up, it's, it's something that, you know, you just, "Okay, you have to do this, this, or this," and somebody picks up that role, and I d- I, I do that.

Well, for me personally, you know, I've always paid attention, as a believe it or not, I have paid attention to what's been going on around me all these years.

And, and, and so I've always, and I had, have been close to some head coaches.

It's kind of been the guys and, and so I've kind of always listened and pa- You know, so whatever Kyle's done, whatever we've done, I, I, it's not like, "Wait, what do we do here?

What do we do here?"

I've, I've always kind of noticed.

So now that it's like, well, I'll take up this and Clay will do this, Raheem will do this, Boyer will do this.

Shoot, we have Everflus here as well.

Everybody could pick up a role.

So, that's all.

It's, and it's been recent.

It's only been the last couple days.

I didn't know this was gonna happen a- as it has the last couple days.

With the area about, around, his, his ankle We'll see.

It's his ankle.

We'll see exactly what it is and, and obviously all, with all the injuries, so I know Kyle usually goes through the report.

I'm not doing that.

You can check.

Corey will update you guys on that stuff.

But I, we'll see.

Hopefully he's not that bad.

Conor Colby was in here this week saying that, like, Kyle was on the field.

Do you think he went back?

Well, Conor had an awesome off season.

I would say through OTAs, he really established himself.

I'll say Rob Jones has done an excellent job since being here as well.

Those two guys have really set themselves apart from the other guys.

And then Dom Pudi's had an awesome off season as well.

So first day of camp, short still.

It's like another OTA practice.

We'll see how it goes, but Conor's still doing well.

Chris, do you even wait a few days until you get the pads on, obviously, to, like, when you're gonna have your lineman going against the D-line, and, and I guess what are you trying to see out of both sides?

As far as, like, one-on-ones?

Yeah, and then, I mean, do you look at it from strictly a line coaching perspective, or do you, you know, look at both and see how the team's doing overall?

Oh, all of it.

I'll look at, obviously, with this, with this, I've always, I've always been asked to, to look at both sides and, and that will continue to look at the defensive line, what's my opinion on CJ Day or this guy or, you know, that type of thing.

So I'm always involved in the process.

Can you tell yet, it seemed like after Lowe went down with the injury, Enrique Cruz immediately ran into left tackle.

I know he's only been here a week or so, but can you tell, you know, whether he spent the, the, the lag there studying and doing the right things?

Really good.

Yeah, Enrique's been a, a real plus.

Everybody in the building's pleased with him.

You know, people come up out of nowhere, from all over the building and say, "Gosh, that Enrique's doing a really nice job.

He's really professional, really working on it."

He has a learning curve like all the young guys do and, and, he's got a, he's got a long way to go, but he's done all the right things to this point.

Chris, have you ever had five new offensive linemen in a room?

And that, that makes a guy like Jake and Trent and Colton try to, you know, get those guys to try to take more of a lead because they are the vets.

They do a great job.

I mean, but it is, it is fun.

It does take you back to ground zero a little bit.

We have to go back for everybody.

It's not, it's not bad for Colton or, or, or Jake or those guys, Trent, to go back and start at, at ground zero again.

It also I, I approached the off-season differently this year.

I, I kind of let those guys take some time away, and I met with them individually, the older guys, 'cause I had to do more of the, the base stuff.

But those guys do a great job of letting those, those players know exactly what I'm looking for.

So if there's any question or hesitation, they have three, four guys in a room that could tell the five new guys what we're looking for.

It really helps.

Chris, I think part of the guy, you know, like where do you fall on, on offsides when you stop, you have the guy do it over or do you- I, I love it.

If, if I had If, if, they said do it, I, we- I like to s- I say, "It's over.

You don't get that play back."

In other words, I As coaches, you hate that because you're like, you, you hate losing the rep.

But I want You know, the importance of the rep is it, we stay on sides.

And the way to learn to stay on sides, you know, we don't get the rep back.

So you don't get a rep to show us what you do on film.

We've traditionally done, which is I've been everywhere else, so that was a long time ago when that was like that.

Now we usually bury the rep.

Sometimes we get back up and run again.

The problem is sometimes you show the play.

So it's the whole dilemma of you show the play, you do it again, and Fred knows what the play is.

Or do you flip the play over and then run the risk of it's not run right or da, da, da?

And then you say, what I What we did, we decided that we just take it to the end of the little block of four or five plays if the ones are going and then repeat it at the end.

That's all.

What's your take on big speeches?

Obviously Kyle has his way of, just address- Believe it or not, I don't like big speeches.

I like to, coach and talk a lot about c- football and I like talking about technique and fundamentals and players and, and, and, and what's important about playing a game of football.

Speeches as far as, you know, that, it's, it's hard for me.

I That John made fun of it yesterday, I'm not sure.

He didn't think I was a breakdown guy.

And, I challenged grumpy, but I think maybe I am a little grumpy.

But I do know that he said it was, I don't like And I don't love the big breakdowns after practice.

The problem is after practice I may have an impression of practice based on one or two plays, and I could be completely wrong if I talk to the team afterwards about practice.

That's my opinion.

So I'm always, I'm very careful to say this was a good or bad practice.

Let's go watch the tape, and we'll decide if it was a good or bad practice.

I can have an impression, but I, I'm, I struggle with That's why I struggle with the big speeches.

So you broke down the team, said the word.

I got a little fired up today because I was challenged yesterday, so I got a little bit fired up and told them how fired up I was to be a part of this team and, and how much I love the way they practice and the energy they bring every day and, and got a lot to work on, and we'll keep working.

Chris, during this time, is it gonna be like you're, you're calling Kyle at night and he's telling you things that he wants to see, or is this He's truly kinda removed outside of just being around the facility?

Well, he's here.

He, he's, he's, he's a part of the things.

That's when he's here, he's listening to everything.

When he's not, he knows what's going on.

This is, like I said, I don't wanna say autopilot, but, but when you get into schedule, you barely have time.

You know, you go to lunch, you go to meetings, you And, and the meetings are scheduled and planned, and you're barely getting everything done.

You go to practice, and now you have this tape to watch, individual tape.

So as far as a point of emphasis or something like that, over the course of time there may be some things that start to come up, and he may notice or some other coach may notice, "Hey, let's, let's talk about that."

But we don't It, it really doesn't need to be, like, directed at this point, a- at least right now.

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