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00:00Tim, how are you? Thanks for coming on.
00:02Hey, good to be with you guys. How are you guys doing?
00:05We're doing good, except for I don't want to incorrectly present the headline, so you
00:12tell me, but it looked to me like you wrote something about, that's a wrap, shut it down
00:17for the 49ers this year. Is that how you feel?
00:19Yeah, maybe a little simplified. I don't think that was exactly the extent of it. It was
00:24within reason. You know, I've been saying this for a couple of weeks now, so I don't
00:27think if anybody's surprised has been reading me, like after the Seattle game, it was looking
00:32really bad for them. And it might be time to just start being a little more cautious,
00:36being a little more like, you know, we don't need to push everybody. It's been a lot of
00:41years going deep into the post season, some veteran players. I think a lot of people are
00:46worn down. You keep pushing, you try to win games. I'm not saying don't try to win games,
00:50you're not tanking, but maybe you're not pushing everyone to the extreme. And I think they've
00:55kind of done some of this quietly, subtly, or, you know, invisibly, but maybe it's time
01:01to really start thinking. I mean, I would have said, don't play Christian McCaffrey
01:05if he hadn't been hurt, like he got hurt. That makes that decision pretty easy. I would
01:09have said, you know, maybe pull back on Nick Bosa's recovery time. I think they kind of
01:13are doing that. Trent Williams, obviously going through it, also personal tragedy. You
01:17don't need to push these guys. It's just not, you're not getting a lot out of this, I'll
01:23just put it that way. What are you doing it for? For, you know, an 8% chance to get
01:28to the playoffs and like a 2% chance to actually win in the playoffs. Maybe if you're a team
01:34that's never made the playoffs before and you want them to experience this different,
01:38totally opposite with this team. They've made it to the playoffs, they've been deep, they've
01:42been, you know, banged up because of it. The emotions have been frayed this season. You
01:46don't have to keep putting the pedal down. That's my general point. There's a few specific
01:51ways you can do this, but you got to play, right? You got to want to win. These are football
01:56players, their careers, their, you know, their health is in danger. Every time they're on
02:00the field, you want to be as sharp as possible. I'm just saying there are ways at the margins
02:04or maybe even more than the margins where you can ease up a little and make sure you
02:09are playing your best or you have your best shot in 2025. That's what this is mostly about
02:14now. I can see that. And for me, it comes down to the next two games over the course
02:18of the next 10 days and Mark and I have talked about it. If you lose them both and it's an
02:21easy call, if you win them both, it becomes a little bit more difficult. The two players
02:26I'm most curious about though, Tim, in this scenario is George Kittle and Fred Warner.
02:31Fred prides himself on playing every game in his career, but one in George Kittle is
02:36on his way to a kind of a career year with catching the football. Does it become tough
02:41in your mind with those two players in particular? Yeah, you have to have discussions with them.
02:46For me, Fred's playing on a fractured ankle. He wants to be out there and he was out there
02:50late in the game on Sunday in the snow when they're down 35-10. You have to have the conversation
02:57and you want the competitive fire. You don't want players to be asking out and you kind
03:03of have to have, is it reasonable for you to be out there? And I think you have kind
03:09of a big picture, heart to heart. And again, they're going to play. They're going to play
03:13Sunday. They're probably going to play the next game after that. They're probably going
03:16to play the next game after that. Just be reasonable about it. And there's a way to
03:21maybe get them off the field quicker. There's a way to, okay, Fred, do you really need to
03:25play week 17, week 18? Just have the conversation and understand there's pride. Understand that
03:32he's been going out there on a fractured ankle for seven weeks. He's going to want to keep
03:37doing it. Admirable. You respect that, but you don't have to say everything is all out.
03:45Every single play, every single game. Again, it's not for 2024 anymore. It's for 2025.
03:52It's a, you know, it's a complicated conversation. I'm not saying it's easy, but I wouldn't be
03:58starting to have those conversations down. Again, I think some of them kind of already
04:02have been bad.
04:03Tim Calcommie with us here, Willard and Dibbs. Tim, how do you think this year with all its
04:08complexities has affected the way the organization views Brock Purdy and plans for next year?
04:15Yeah, I mean, it's a week to week thing. I think that, you know, the value of Brock
04:21Purdy, it's the big picture is that he's won a ton of games. He's put up a huge stats.
04:26He's won four playoff games. These are things that are done. They're on the record book.
04:31You can't say that about very many quarterbacks in this league and quarterbacks are expensive.
04:36They know this. If he'd had another great year, like he had last season, maybe it's
04:40$60 million a year. You know, you're going to have to pay it at the top of the market.
04:45Probably not that now, but again, he's going to ask for whatever he's going to ask for.
04:49If you turn away from Brock Purdy now, where are you? I mean, what, Sam Darnold's a quarterback
04:54next year? I don't think they want to go down that path. I think it's pretty clear that
04:59the future is Brock Purdy, a quarterback. He's going to turn 25 pretty soon. That's
05:04very young for a quarterback. He's had many starts. He's had one of many games in as many
05:09big environments as he's had. Has he had some iffy moments this season? Absolutely. He's
05:14not Patrick Mahomes. He's not Josh Allen. I think we kind of knew that going into the
05:18season. Maybe you want to see more from him, but maybe that means it's $50 million a year
05:23instead of $60 million. Maybe they can get him up for you. I don't know. Again, I'm not
05:26going to do negotiations here, but I think he's going to be back. I think they're going
05:31to sign to a long-term deal. Maybe the dollars drop a little bit, but I don't know that he
05:35was going to put a gun to their head and make them pay him as much as Dak Prescott did to
05:40the Cowboys or we've seen other teams do. I just don't think that was the way this was
05:43going to go. I think it was going to go to a very reasonable way. Again, I'm not negotiating
05:50the deal. Maybe his agent and Purdy group have different ideas. Maybe the foreigners
05:55have different ideas, but I think he's a long-term answer. I'll put it this way. He's a long-term
05:59answer if Kyle Shanahan's your long-term coach. Now, if there are any questions about that
06:03in Jed York's mind, maybe you back off a Purdy deal at this moment. I don't think he has
06:08those questions and I don't think he has those questions about Brock Purdy either. It's just
06:12saying if you're going on a new coach in a year, then maybe you're not so committed to
06:17paying Brock Purdy $55 million a year off into the next six years. I don't think that's
06:23the way this was going to go. I think this was going to be Kyle Shanahan, Brock Purdy
06:27into 2025. If you are committed to that, and I, you know, if you're not, then you're talking
06:31about a rebuild. And I don't know if you want to tell that to Nick Bowes, to George Kittle,
06:36Fred Warner, and everyone else. Then you're going to go in it with a long-term deal, every
06:42intent, I guess, for a long-term deal for Brock Purdy. And then you go into 2025 knowing
06:47you got who you got your quarterback and I think they want to feel that way.
06:50So, Tim, just so that I'm clear, when you immediately said you think it's a week-to-week
06:55thing, you're talking more about like the specific dollars, not-
06:59How you feel.
07:00Yeah, not-
07:01That's how you feel.
07:02Okay, okay, okay.
07:03Feelings.
07:04So you don't think the Niners-
07:05Uh-oh, you know.
07:06You don't think the team is questioning that week-to-week whether they like Brock Purdy?
07:10No, I just mean it's in the world of instant adrenaline NFL where every game seems to mean
07:15so much except for until the next game, it's just a feeling. And the feeling is whatever,
07:21it changes. But you're not getting a better quarterback than Brock Purdy. I think that
07:25is the practical way, which I always try to look at this, the practical way. They're not
07:30going to have a better quarterback than them for the next five years. You're going to have
07:33to pay for it then. If that's the decision now, you're going to have to pay for it. And
07:37if you can get it for less than $60 million, which is what I would imagine they could be,
07:43then you got to do it. You just have to do it. And I just don't know that there's any
07:48other way to find a quarterback who better fits Kyle Shanahan's system. I don't think
07:51there's a better way to find a better head coach than Kyle Shanahan. If those two are
07:55answered in the way I just did, then Brock Purdy is going to be making a lot of money
08:00for the 49ers. It's just a matter of what the number is. I'm just saying week-to-week
08:04is the feeling. Oh my God, that didn't look so good. But then the next week is get your
08:07best shot to win. It just goes up and down on this social media world or reaction world.
08:15You can't do it like that, though. You cannot do it like that. You have to do what's the
08:20long-term vision, what's the long-term piece. If you don't go with this guy, how are you
08:25going to replace him? And that's when it becomes very problematic for a world without Brock
08:29Purdy.
08:30And that's where, as a fan, it becomes fun because you do get to do that. But for the
08:33Niners front office, they obviously can't do that and ride with every pass, every incomplete,
08:39every ball that slips out of his hand in the snow because he's not good in foul weather.
08:44You said something about the Shanahan system. As we look back at this year eventually, do
08:49you see changes that need to be made? Is it adjustments and tweaks? Are there bigger changes?
08:55What does Kyle do with his system, his staff, and his approach to avoid this happening again?
09:02I think you've got to figure out how they can consistently run the ball again. So much
09:06is based on that. And my wild theory has been that he had a system that was fine for medium
09:13to pretty good running backs. We know Raheem Mostert, Elijah Mitchell, he had others that
09:18they won a lot of games with. Then they got Christian McCaffrey and everything changed
09:23and everything, the world opened up to him and he, I think it changed a little bit. And
09:28then he lost McCaffrey for the first eight games of the season and really for the first
09:3110, he really wasn't great the first two games he was back from the injury. And Shanahan
09:36couldn't do it. The running game wasn't there. I think, if you ask me, it's about an investment
09:42in the offensive line, which they really haven't done other than left tackle and a first-round
09:47pick for Mike McGlynn, she way back when, but they don't have him anymore.
09:51I think they've poured so much resources in the defensive line and the wide receiver.
09:56I get it, understandable. And they have not done it for the offensive line. I think it's
10:01time to go to the offensive line. We can go run the ball. Jim Harbaugh drafts an offensive
10:05line in the top five pick. Kyle Shanahan has not done that. I think it's time, if you have
10:10a top 12 pick, let's say, look at tackle. Just feel like you can run the ball whenever,
10:17against whomever, even if they know. That used to be the 49ers, has not happened this
10:21season. And I think that's kind of thrown the whole Shanahan thing off. If you cannot
10:27run, then you've got to have a better system than they have been able to call this season
10:31obviously with a lot of injuries. I just think it's all crumbled because they get down to
10:35the red zone, because they do move the ball, right? They still move the ball. They didn't
10:39against so much in the last few games, but this season they piled up yards. They just
10:44cannot score touchdowns, largely because they cannot run the ball in the red zone. They're
10:49not running the ball into the end zone. I think kind of a strategic shift to say, you
10:55know, well, maybe we do have to invest in a free agent guard and maybe we should draft
11:00it off a tackle in the first round. And it's a very Harbaugh-esque and I don't think it's
11:06wrong. And I think maybe building your next kind of 49er season around a new fangled kind
11:14of upper talent offensive line, I think would be the way to go. That's a shift, a personnel
11:19shift more than anything. But I think we've seen what the 49ers look like when they can't
11:24run the ball reliably. And it is not the same as we've seen in the past.
11:28Tim, when you were talking about Purdy's future and you kind of linked it to Kyle and what
11:33ownership is thinking about that, how do you think Jed York feels about Kyle Shanahan right
11:40now?
11:41I think he thinks he can't get a better coach. That's the way to look at it. You know, you
11:46would obviously would have wanted him to win Super Bowls at this point, but it hasn't happened.
11:51He's gotten to two, he's gotten to four NFC Championship games. You can't say, hey, he's
11:57done everything that Jed York would have ever wanted him to and he's paying him a lot of
12:00money. But you can say that he's got them close to, and you can say that I don't know
12:04who would do a better job and who you can rely on putting together a structure like
12:09Kyle Shanahan has. I don't think he's thinking about moving on from him. And in addition,
12:15if he loves John Lynch, which I think he does, if you fire Kyle Shanahan, you're probably
12:19going to lose John Lynch too. It's just, I look at it so practically, that's how I
12:23look at it. It isn't, oh my God, he could do this better and fire him. Well, what are
12:27you going to do next? What's this franchise going to look like after that? Is it going
12:32to be the dark days of Chip Kelly and Jim Pomsula? Is it going to be the days of Mike
12:37Nolan and Mike Singletary? I don't think that's where you want to go. And there's no way you
12:42know who the next guy, what the next guy is going to do. You just don't know. And in fact,
12:49you're probably going to get a worse coach, frankly. And I just don't see how that is
12:53the equation that Jed York is making. Maybe the younger Jed York would make a decision
12:57like this. He in fact did make a decision like this 10 years ago with Jim Harbaugh.
13:01And it was absolutely the wrong decision. I don't see him going down that road this
13:06time. Again, it doesn't mean he thinks Kyle Shanahan has been perfect. Kyle Shanahan has
13:10not been perfect. Jed York has not been perfect. Nobody's been perfect. And we've seen kind
13:16of the result of it right now. Although you can explain it in the entries, you can explain
13:20it in the Super Bowl hangover, you can explain it in all the different things. I just don't
13:23know with this group of players who believe in Kyle Shanahan, which I really believe they
13:28do. I wrote today, like if you ever sense that they lose belief, there's a loss of will,
13:33different equation, certainly don't sense that. In fact, I think if you fired Kyle Shanahan,
13:37they'd be pissed off in that locker room. They would be mad about that. They believe
13:42that Kyle Shanahan is their best way to win. If all those things being true, then your
13:47best shot in 2025 with all these stars who you're not coming off of because you're invested
13:52in them is with Kyle Shanahan as a coach. I think that's the way Jed York is thinking.
13:57And I think it's the practical and smart way to think.
13:59Agreed. And beyond that, it leads me to my next question, which is about the coordinators,
14:04the defensive coordinator, Nick Sorensen and Brian Schneider, the special teams coordinator,
14:08neither of whom has had a terrific year. Kyle spoke yesterday and he basically defended
14:14the defensive coordinator. Where do you see these two positions lying? Are they being
14:19scapegoated or are those coordinators having bad years?
14:23Coordinators always get scapegoated. I mean, that's just kind of job. It's job description.
14:30Unless you're running a perfect scheme, perfect players, you're going to get blamed for a
14:34lot of things. I think Sorensen is up in the air. I think he was like the first fourth
14:40choice anyway in offseason. If Shanahan can get one of those top three guys with Jeff
14:44Ulbrich, you know, I've even thrown on Belichick if somebody asked about last year. If Robert
14:52Sala is interested in the job, there are ways he could go and say, look, I wanted to hire
14:57these guys last year. I'm bringing them in. I think they'll be better. I can see that.
15:01But he'd have to have a better candidate, again, being very practical. I don't think
15:05he's down on Nick Sorensen. I think there's just possibly better candidates to run the
15:09defense, more exciting candidates to run the defense. I think that'll be TBD. I think Brian
15:15Shire should not have this job anymore. So he's going to finish out the season. You just
15:19cannot have this many mistakes. And they were not particularly good last year either. It's
15:25got to point to somebody, even if it's a scapegoating, even if the players are obviously the ones
15:29responsible for the mistakes, he's got to put them in better positions than he has.
15:34It would be very hard to explain bringing Brian Schneider back in 2025. If he insisted
15:39on that, which he's not going to, I can't believe that maybe there's an issue down the
15:44road. But I cannot I cannot picture the 49ers keeping the special teams coach who ran this
15:50horrendous special teams groups this season being back for 2025.
15:55Tim Calicami on Willard & Dibbs, the Warriors plus minus pod on the Odyssey Network and
16:00app. Also his work on the SF Standard, always fantastic. So Tim, when people come up to
16:07you on the street or you got friends who are like, man, Tim will know what's going on.
16:12What the hell happened to the 49ers this year? Do you go injuries, off field tragedies? Do
16:21you talk about Kyle Shanahan? Like, how do you answer that question? What the hell happened?
16:27Yeah, I think sometimes you have a bad year. I just think that's it. And there are reasons
16:32for it. When you pointed to some of them, I think the wear and tear of the deep postseason
16:37runs, call it Super Bowl hangover, or just four years of this hangover is the clearest
16:44reason. But then sometimes you just have bad years. Sometimes it just doesn't come together.
16:49You get spoiled with a team that keeps going to playoffs. You get spoiled watching the Chiefs,
16:54for example. But other teams go through this too. And you bear with it. And I pointed to
17:00the Eagles last year. We're the best team in the league. 49ers beat the hell out of them.
17:05And then they just went in a tailspin and losing the first round. What do they do? They don't fire
17:10everybody. They change coordinators, but keep the roster core intact. Go into next season with a
17:18plan and look where they are now. I think you can compare those two, two smart teams,
17:24two teams that have talent that don't do dumb things up and down the line and just stay the
17:30course and see if next year is going to be bad. If next year is bad, different, entirely different
17:35discussion and whole different thing, a whole different vibe. But that hasn't happened yet.
17:41I would just say sometimes in football where guys get hurt and the ball bounce is funny
17:46and a few plays here, they're like, there's three plays that turn to see three, I'd say
17:51fourth quarters that turn to season. The Rams, the Cardinals, the Seahawks, they win two of those
17:56games, guys. They probably favored to win the division and maybe have the third seed. Those
18:02games happen. They're there. Bad seasons sometimes occur. And I think that's the clearest explanation
18:09for this team this season is things just turn bad. Some of them totally their fault. Some of them
18:16their fault. Some of them not their fault. Then you just pick it up, do what the Eagles did,
18:22go in the next season with some sense of confidence that we're still good players.
18:26We still got good coaches and the likelihood is it won't be as bad as it was this year.
18:31So you get Saquon Barkley is how you go out there and fix it.
18:34Or that. Or that. They got Saquon Barkley. They got Christian McAfee. They didn't have him this
18:40year. Yeah, exactly. You know, you make smart moves. You be smart. Usually, usually not every
18:46year. Usually good things happen. The Warriors, Tim, while we have we got the game coming up
18:51later tonight and a big one here at home against Denver started 10 and two and subsequently went
18:56two and five. Which team are the Warriors? Are they the 10 and two group or the two and five group?
19:02Oh, the easy, easy answers there in between. Even when they were 10 and two, I don't think
19:07that the real people thought that this was the best team in the league,
19:10although they were the top of the conference. They were top of the league.
19:13Yeah. And you went at Boston went, OK, see, it's fair to think, oh, my God, what's going on here?
19:18But even then, you could see that this was a good team, but not a great team. I think
19:25recently they've looked bad, but they're not that bad. There are several different things
19:31happening at once. The loss, obviously, at the Anthony Milton, that's kind of just put a shock
19:35to the roster. Some underperformances by Przemysl to begin the season, looking a little bit better.
19:42TJD has not played very well. I think that has put a little shock to the rotation,
19:47trying to figure, you know, trying to force Lindy Waters in the starting lineup. That didn't work.
19:51They've got some issues, right? They could they just don't have that second score. We talk about
19:56that for years and years and years. They didn't have one. They won the title in twenty twenty
20:00two. Right. Wiggins kind of turned into it, but not going to be the guy who's going to be it
20:04forever. They really need that second score. I don't think it's on the roster. Melton could have
20:10been it. You don't know that he would have been, but he was a chance to be it. They're probably
20:16going to have to make trade if they really want to do this or Jonathan Minga just says this is it.
20:20I'm going to be that guy tonight. It's going to be a really interesting game for me. He's likely
20:23going to start right with with Tremont out. OK, Jonathan, you're going to get thirty three minutes.
20:28You're probably going to get 20 shots if you want them. What do you do? I think maybe you
20:33see a big coming again. I don't know if they're going to win. I don't know if he's going to do
20:35that. But a lot of this turns on. Can you turn into that guy? We've talked about this for years
20:41or do they trade him at the deadline, which they can. They absolutely can. And what can they get
20:46for him? I just think it's a team that's kind of TBD. It's the incomplete right now because
20:54they can be good. We still have Steph Curry. You can dream about run through the past and you got
20:59him playing like this. You got Draymond playing defense. And yet with the loss of Melton and the
21:05uncertainty about coming and possibly trades that could develop into January and February,
21:12you just don't know where this is going to end up. I think it's a pretty good team.
21:16That's what I think they are. But they do have to play to it. And I'm very curious to see what
21:21can they get us tonight. Big time, big time against the Nuggets here in a matter of hours.
21:26Tim, thank you so much. We love it when you come on. You got any time guys. There it is.