The 49ers Offensive Line Coach Gives an Honest Assessment of Mike McGlinchey

"Mike can be Mike’s worst enemy."

SANTA CLARA -- It's the season of giving and the 49ers are riding an eight-game win streak, so people want to find nice things to say about all of their starters, including their worst one, right tackle Mike McGlinchey.

The 49ers drafted McGlinchey with the ninth pick in 2018 and he has been a massive disappointment -- that's why they haven't extended his contract and he'll be a free agent this offseason. This season, he already has committed a career-high 10 penalties, and yet some people say he's having the best season of his career.

A reporter recently asked 49ers offensive line coach Chris Foerster about how much Mike McGlinchey has improved, probably expecting Foerster to shower McGlinchey with sugary praise. 

Instead, Foerster kept it real. Here's what he said:

FOERSTER: “Mike’s continued to work really hard at getting better. We’ve talked about it before, Mike can be Mike’s worst enemy. And that’s where I’d say the most improvements occurred. There have been some bad plays and usually one doesn’t stack upon another. Sometimes they do, but for the most part, Mike’s been able to reach a level of consistency that even though there are some plays he’s not happy with, I’m not happy with, he has improved greatly from his first year until now. He works really hard at getting better. 

"Is it perfect? It’s not perfect by any stretch, but he’s made gradual improvement every year and my thing I’m most happy with is he’s able to come off the field, I think last week was probably the exception, he was pretty upset with himself after the false start penalty and then having another one after that was not good, so that was probably the only time this season that it was probably a little bit more like it’d been in past seasons, but for the most part, Mike’s done a really good job of working through that and that’s allowed him to play more consistently. 

"As much as the game’s a physical game, it’s a mental game and you have to be able to understand. Trent Williams has said it before, I’ll never forget when we were in Washington and we played against Aldon Smith here in San Francisco, and we played him back in Washington and Trent got beat for a sack and everybody was making a big deal and Trent said, Aldon Smith’s a great player and he’s going to beat me sometimes, it just happens. Joe Staley would always say, if I blocked Aldon one out of 10 snaps in practice, it’s the same thing with Mike. No matter how good Mike is, they’re good rushers on the other side. They’re going to do good things and last week’s group was a really talented group, so it has you on edge throughout the game. You have to stay calm and understand each rep lives and dies by itself and you learn from it, you build and you go on to the next rep and see how you can improve and get better and not let the bad overwhelm you and that’s where Mike’s really improved, I would say more than anything.”

Q: He had the first false start, then he had the second, did he get it back together after that second?

FOERSTER: “He was fine after that, yeah, he was good, but he was down. It wasn’t the same. He was really down on himself and the game was pretty much in hand at that time, so it wasn’t terrible after that. It could have maybe been a little bit better, but it wasn’t noticeable after the second one. The first one was just purely jumping early. The second one there was a little pause in the cadence. It’s not excusing, it’s nobody else’s fault but Mike’s, nobody else jumped, but again, there was with the motion, there was a pause and there was a little bit more reason for it, but that was my point to him. You were a little on edge from the first one and so the second one, it was just get yourself back to zero. Let’s go and let’s get started. 

"It’s a challenge and every guy has it, Aaron Banks has it in different ways. It may not show up in a false start, but it may show up in a way he sets for the next two series, and I have to remind him, ‘Hey dude, let’s get back to square one. Come on. Remember what we talked about all week.’ Same thing with Spencer Burford, all of them, even Trent, I’ll say, ‘Hey, Trent, now you’re starting to look like this thing we talked about in the offseason that you didn’t want to do, we have to get out of that.’ And everybody, that’s what the process of the game is. That’s why I think one of my roles besides, helping with the play calls and the things like that is to keep the guys on point, to look at the pictures, to watch them during the game, to see what they’re doing, to talk about the fundamentals, to keep them on task so that we can continue to do what we plan to do during the game.”

Watch the full interview below: