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Why the 49ers Wanted Brock Purdy and Deommodore Lenoir to Speak

It's nice to see Shanahan empower two young players with the season on the line.

Grant Cohn

Dec 8, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) looks to throw a pass against the Chicago Bears in the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images
Dec 8, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy (13) looks to throw a pass against the Chicago Bears in the first quarter at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images / Cary Edmondson-Imagn Images
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By now, you've probably heard that Brock Purdy and Deommodore Lenoir both spoke to their teammates at a team meeting on Saturday night.

But here's why they spoke: Kyle Shanahan asked those two specifically to address the team. They didn't volunteer. Shanahan volunteered them. And he hadn't asked any player to speak at a Saturday night team meeting in quite a while, so this was a big deal.

“Just trying to change it up," Shanahan said Monday on a conference call with Bay Area reporters. "Sometimes I'll have somebody speak differently and just to switch up the routine a little bit. But I just, when you ask guys to speak, you want to make sure it's guys that people truly respect and they respect how they play and how they carry themselves and how important the job is to them. And those are two guys who, we’ve got a number of guys like that on our team, but those two guys, I just know how much our team respects them on and off the field.”

Here's why players respect Purdy and Lenoir: they're two of the best players in the league at their respective positions, they put in the work and don't coast on talent, and they're accountable. Which means they're everything Deebo Samuel hasn't been this season. Samuel is a captain and supposedly a leader. But Shanahan didn't ask him to speak.

It's nice to see Shanahan empower two young players with the season on the line.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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