Why the 49ers Don't Seem as Confident as Last Season

Despite returning many of the same players on offense from the past few seasons, the 49ers have lots of new position coaches, particularly on offense, and many of them are complete novices.

After the 49ers got completely emasculated at home by Kansas City this Sunday, a reporter asked Jimmy Garoppolo if he's confident the 49ers can turn their season around like they did last season. Remember, the 49ers were 3-4 last season too, then they went to the NFC Championship game. Surely they believe they can do that again, right?

Not necessarily.

"It's hard to compare," Garoppolo said. "Just a different team, different players, a lot of different coaches, too."

Garoppolo hit on something that has flown under the radar this season. Despite returning many of the same players on offense from the past few seasons, the 49ers have lots of new position coaches, particularly on offense, and many of them are complete novices.

Today, I asked Kyle Shanahan how all those new faces working together for the first time has contributed to the offense's struggles.

"Going through a year when you have every single person on our offense is in a new position except for our O-line coach, I think you start out that way some," Shanahan said. "Especially when you spend the whole offseason getting everyone ready for a plan with what we were going to do with Trey Lance and things like that, then you go a different direction by the first quarter of the second game, so everyone's up to date on stuff, but you realize it's your first time going through stuff with people. Our first time playing the Rams, I felt like it was our millionth, but last time we put a game plan together I realized a lot of these guys haven't gone through this with us, so you have some of that stuff, but that stuff you go throughout the year with and you have that with players too.”

Sounds like Kyle Shanahan typically delegates lots of the game-planning and in-game adjustments to his assistants, and the new ones he hired this offseason are learning on the job. I'm talking quarterbacks coach Brian Griese, wide receivers coach Leonard Hankerson, tight ends coach Brian Fleury and running backs coach Anthony Lynn.

Fortunately for the 49ers, they have a Bye next week which they can use to regroup and bring their new coaches up to speed.