There seems to be much better energy around the 2025 San Francisco 49ers, and that even seems to extend to the team's head coach, Kyle Shanahan.
With the team infused with some youth, particularly on defense, and some of the spectres and dead weight of last season removed, everyone seems much more optimistic, and there's been great energy at the team's recent practices.
That even came across in Kyle Shanahan's recent interview with Tim Kawakami of the San Francisco Standard, where Shanahan was unusually loose with his words and much more energetic than he had seemed for the year prior.
However, one series of comments, about the return of linebacker Dre Greenlaw, stuck out to me, and should to anyone who suffered through the 2024 season.
Speaking about Greenlaw's explosive return against the Rams, Shanahan criticised the motivation of his defensive players throughout 2024, saying:
"Dre Greenlaw played a quarter and a half that game. Why did everyone else play so much better? Because Dre is that good. I know everyone knows that, but one guy can’t make everyone that much better. But the other 10 played that much better. In my opinion, it’s because—and I feel the same way—we were all motivated more because Dre is out there. How the hell...how can we be motivated more? Aren’t we always motivated as much as we can be? That’s the M.O. of who we are. We’re always this same. We always go hard. We don’t just go hard—oh Dre’s out there? We have a chance this week—that’s not who we are. That was a sign to me, to the veterans, to myself, to everyone that that’s not right. I want that youth that we don’t give a damn about anything."Kyle Shanahan
Shanahan has a point in some ways. Players should always be motivated to give their best, and not doing so is a disservice to ticket-buying fans, as well as the millions who watch across the world, some at inhospitable hours (can't imagine who I'm thinking of here). If that wasn't the case, then yes, that's quite damning.
However, I do have to mostly side with the players here. How do you continually motivate yourself to give your best when your head coach and defensive coordinator refuse to see what's in front of them?
For all Shanahan's talk of youthful energy, it was him and his crony appointee on defense, Nick Sorensen (who was underqualified from the start) trotting out mediocre to dreadful veterans like Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles and the infamous De'Vondre Campbell ahead of players that could've made a difference, like Dee Winters or Tatum Bethune.
It's notable that when Winters did come into games, the defense often looked energised. However, despite being listed as a "starter" for most games and gaining significant snaps, Winters was often off the field during crunch time of games, being replaced by "solid veterans" who stank out the place and gave up plays that led to defeats.
No one forced Shanahan to hire an unqualified defensive coordinator. No one forced that coordinator and Shanahan to play those players. No one failed to hold these players and that coordinator to account every week, except Kyle Shanahan.
More importantly, no one held youth back on both sides of the ball in 2024 more than Shanahan. Whether it was Winters sitting on the bench to let Campbell lumber around after opposing tight ends, or wide receiver Ronnie Bell inexplicably showing up on the field at crunch time ahead of then-rookie Jacob Cowing, who actually did something in his limited snaps, it was by far the most infuriating pattern of 2024. An overreliance on "solid veterans" who were actually dreadful NFL players and a seemingly unending myopia when looking at the results on the field.
It would've been nice to see a little more self-awareness from Shanahan. Critique the players all you want -- and as fans, we'll all have done it at some point -- but at some stage, you have to give your team a reason to keep showing up every week, especially during a difficult season. If you're constantly seeing the same people who put you behind the eight-ball in games run back out onto the field with you, it's easy to become disillusioned.
Equally, bringing back a talent like Greenlaw would obviously give a team a shot in the arm, whatever Shanahan says. He's one of the best linebackers in 49ers history and will be well remembered for his plays during this era. More than anything, though, he had something a lot of the 2024 Niners roster didn't.
Competence.
Hopefully it was a hard lesson learned by Shanahan in 2024. His comments about youth and energy seem to make that case, whereas rehiring coordinator Robert Saleh shows that he at least knew the defensive staff needed a massive injection of energy and competence.
If that is the case, 2025 should be much better, and hopefully he'll not forget that moving forward, too.