San Francisco 49ers assistant head coach and offensive line coach Chris Foerster, temporarily serving as interim head coach, spoke with reporters after Friday's training camp practice. Here's everything he had to say.

Transcript provided by the San Francisco 49ers Communications staff.


What does WR Deebo Samuel Sr. bring to the locker room and what's your history with him?

"I've been here, I think, since we drafted Deebo. When the ball's in Deebo's hands, there's a lot of special things that he can do. So, you find as many different ways to get the ball in his hands so he can impact the game in a special way. We'll look at that, obviously, as many ways as we can to involve him in the game plan."

Is there an update on WR Ricky Pearsall's condition?

"It was a re-aggravation of the PCL, so he just re-aggravated it. We're continuing to evaluate it."

When you get Deebo on the field, what's going to be the plan with him? Is it going to be just like he never left, or are you going to have to figure out, at this stage of his career, what he's best suited toward doing?


"There's been a lot of conversations over the time trying to get this thing done, and I'm not sure it's something we really know at this point. I think it can all play out. One thing about Deebo is he can do a lot of different things. He can carry the ball in the backfield, motions, play receiver. Everything Deebo brings to the table, we're going to take full advantage of all of his skill sets, so wherever that fits best. The good thing is with him, he kind of fits a lot of places."

What did you see from WR De'Zhaun Stribling, who seemed to be pretty involved today?

"I love him. He's very mature for a young guy. He's learned the book. He's learned the formations. He does things right. He makes plays. He's fast. He's physical. He's got really, really good hands. The guy, he's outstanding. Everything that our scouting staff and position coaches evaluated him as just seems to be coming true. It's early. He's got a long way to go, but for early, he's doing so many things very well. It's very impressive."

It got a little feisty there a couple of plays in a row. You're the guy running practice. Did you expect something like that? Did you feel it coming?

"It's been, I think, six-seven months since we've had pads on, so we're not quite used to it yet. It seems funny because they really, all they do is put something on their shoulders and everything else is the same. But the physicality that goes on in practice. Play one, and then play 15, then play 20 and they can get chirpy. Obviously, fighting's not something that we want at practice. We don't want guys tackling or getting on the ground. I just think it's the first day in pads. It's not quite where we want it. It's nothing more than that. Just keep tweaking as we go. Continue to compete. You're always going to be on the brink. You just can't cross that line because in a game you end up losing a player when that happens. Whatever happened in practice, we'll evaluate and address it tomorrow, but for the most part, it's kind of, unfortunately, a first day in pads type of thing."


Is it surprising at all that two veterans are in the middle of it?

"Well, you have very competitive people, and that's what you have. When you get guys that are competitive, it doesn't matter how veteran, how good a leader a guy is. When you're in competitive situations, sometimes the fuse gets lit. Like I said, your first day in pads, everybody's trying to set the tempo, set the tone. Things happen. Obviously, you don't want it to go on every day. You don't want it to become a problem. But I don't think it's any more than a day one issue."

Head coach Kyle Shanahan was out there, even a little earlier maybe today. I know you're busy, but have you noticed the tick up in the things that Kyle's able to do and the amount of time he's able to commit to it?

"I don't keep track of the time he's here, so I can't answer that. I do know that, I've said this to a couple guys, that when he's there with us, we watch our tape after practice, and he's Kyle to me. He seems really good. I do think that I don't know what happens after the recovery, and I think he's challenging himself and pushing himself. But I see him every day, and I think he stays a little bit more. I'm not sure of the whole routine, but I see Kyle being Kyle a whole lot right now."

Is that what your communication is? You guys watch film together and break down practice and all that kind of thing?


"Yeah, we do come in after practice. The very first day of practice, Kyle was in there and ran the tape. We went through it, and it seems pretty good, maybe minus as many ribbings and jokes as he tries to get me with or something like that. For the most part, it's pretty straightforward, correcting the tape, and he's really good."

Do you guys hold regular personnel meetings after practices, just to go through all the positions, how everything's going? Is Kyle in on those?

"We don't do the post-practice personnel or daily personnel. It used to be great. We used to have these 10:30 at night personnel meetings. You'd sit there and go from 12, 14 hours, 15, 16, and then you'd sit at 10:30 and we'd review every position, every night. I always thought it was overkill, and it is. But we do every morning, we address the injuries reports. We come through the evening, the injury report. We know who's injured, who's hurt. We get ready to go out to practice that day, and we kind of go through at that point the injuries and the positions and where we stand. When it comes time, we set personnel meetings to change the depth chart and things like that. We can have discussions daily, but we don't do them every single night."

Is Kyle in on those morning meetings?

"He's been in the building every morning. Not every morning in the meeting. The practice plan meeting is literally who's hurt, who's practicing. Within five minutes we're out of the meeting."


Being here since Deebo was drafted, do you have a distinct memory of the first time you thought, 'ok, this guys different?'

"Yeah, he's different as a receiver when you look at his body type. He's just so hard to tackle. That's one thing about him. For a guy that plays the position that he plays, he's just a hard guy to tackle. He catches a wide receiver's screen, catches the ball in the backfield, he catches a route, slant or something, next thing you know it can go to the house. He's just a big, strong guy. That's really hard for people to tackle. He's got a unique body type for the position and a very unique style of running with the speed that he has. He's just a very unique talent."

The other day OL Colton McKivitz mentioned that for a rookie, RB Kaelon Black is very decisive, particularly on outside zone stuff, which is unusual. In your experience through the years, is that something that usually takes time for rookies?

"I think my evaluation of Kaelon Black, the thumbnail on him for me was he made more runs that are NFL-type runs. In other words, the way he ran the ball looked like he would have to run the ball in the NFL. Meaning that when presented with a read, when presented with a tackle or when presented with a look, he was appropriate to put his shoulder down and run him over, make a guy miss, slash a guy, bounce a play. Maybe it's the competition, maybe it was the offense they ran, I don't know what it was, but you just saw more of that stuff. As you learn it fast, he was already doing a lot of it. I think one time they asked [University of North Carolina head] coach [Bill] Belichick a question about their corners and tackling, and why is your corner tackling so good? And he said, because we draft guys that tackle, which is a pretty straightforward answer. This guy's a really good runner, and he did a lot of runs that were NFL-style runs. So, he's making them now because he made them in college. It's kind of a simple answer, but it was what we saw on tape."

Conversely, what do you often see when you see a college running back?


"How fast decisions have to be made. The question was asked about sticking your foot in the ground. There's more margin for error in college. In other words, there's not as many defenders beating blocks, there's not as many unblocked defenders. When a hole's there in college, it might be there a little bit longer. Whereas now you break the line of scrimmage, there might not be as many people to deal with. Now you break the line of scrimmage, there's people everywhere. You also find runners that normally would make guys miss running into guys because they're not used to dealing with more levels of defenders that are defeating blocks, and you're having to deal with them. He did that very well. That's one of the problems with kids. Some of them haven't run as much outside zone or the way we run gap schemes. They've been taught a different way. Sometimes there's a learning curve that way."

How do you evaluate rookie OLs Carver Willis and Enrique Cruz Jr. in their first week?

"Very happy with both guys. They really are out there working hard. They're doing a good, good job. We drafted Cruz to be able to compete inside, but with the way things are, he's staying at tackle right now. He's doing a nice job at tackle, but he's always going to have that tackle/guard flex because he's never gone there yet. Carver Willis has done a really nice job. We're cross-training him at center as well, so we'll have some good competition here at left guard and center or backup center type position right now. I'm really happy with both their development. They're both very, very good rookies. They work really hard. They pick things up very well. You could tell when they weren't here, they studied a lot. Very professional, hard-working guys."

What did you like about the addition of TE Josiah Deguara?

"Just seeing him, first impressions are solid. He's doing a good job."


What's your evaluation of the one-on-one linemen drills and how that went? You guys got the better of the defense today?

"Oh, defense always gets the better. I'm going to give them the credit. They always get the better of the offensive line. First day of one-on-ones. It's a great drill. People say it's unrealistic, and to a degree it is, but it really is a hard drill for the offensive linemen. A lot of guys, like I've said before, it gets evaluated heavily. The problem is, a lot of times offensive linemen and defensive linemen are working on things. This is the best time to work on it because there's not the risk – if somebody's working on an inside move, you're not worried about running into the rest of the offensive line in a team period. So, they'll work on an inside move. If I have an offensive lineman, he tries something and misses every time. To us, 'oh, shoot, he missed three one-on-ones.' Yeah, but he's working on something that he really needs to work on, and that's the best place to work on it. Defensive line did a wonderful job today. We had a couple good reps in there, but if we win a day, it's far and few between."

T Trent Williams and DL Nick Bosa were off to the side doing their own thing for a few. What did you see?

"Yeah, Nick needed to get some work not in the live setting. So yeah, they looked good over there. They're working hard."

Do you have any sense of how long RB Jordan James will be out with that rib injury?


"I don't know. We haven't given the time on it yet. So, he'll be back as soon as he can with the rib. A lot of times it's tolerate. Sometimes it heals faster or slower. So, I think it's hard to put a definite time frame on. It was a combination of the punch out. It's the punch out with the spin. It's one of those perfect storms. You punch out, you hit the ball. They don't miss the ball very much. But if all of a sudden when he goes to the ball, you move, all of a sudden something else is there. And I think he saw the punch coming. There was time to see it and so he tried to do something to make him miss. I think that's what caused it to happen."

I heard you the other day say that Kyle told you, 'Hey, if you want to do something, do it. Otherwise, delegate.' How often have you found yourself kind of doing things as you wanted? How much have you delegated? How's that gone?

"There's little things here and there. Today we had a team meeting. I ran a team meeting. It was on protect the team, don't get in fights. I did a great job with that one, right? [Laughs.] For the most part, post practice, like the other day, I let the special teams coach take a breakdown and he gave an outstanding 30 second speech. Just 30 seconds on leadership and commitment and things like it was outstanding to let somebody else talk. And usually, Kyle breaks them down and picks a player to say something. So, I've just alternated between me pulling up and saying, 'Hey, practice was good. It could be a little bit better tomorrow. Let's stay off the ground. Hey, Dmo [DB Deommodore Lenoir], break us down.' Let somebody else have a chance. They probably won't get that chance again to say it. So, we've been doing that. And when it's appropriate to have the team meeting, which there's oftentimes I feel it will be and maybe tomorrow it will be, or maybe it's better handled individually so that it's a little bit of freedom that way. But I've been doing a little bit of both. Just a little bit of both still."

You say you don't like fights, but the whole thing is a fight. Would you rather have a team that fights too much or a team that doesn't fight at all?

"Some of those physical teams I've been on never fought in practice. Some of the greatest defenses in Tampa, there was no fighting allowed. If you fight, you're thrown out of a game. So to me, you don't need to prove you're a tough guy. You want to prove you're a tough guy? Block better, play the defense better, play your techniques better. When somebody talks crap, wait until the next play to make them pay for it. Within the structure of the rules of the game, stepping outside the rules of the game to do anything, whether it be holding, fighting, pass interference, all those things, there's no place for them because you've got to practice like you're going to play the games. If I have a drill that doesn't match game, what am I doing? I'm wasting time. If I'm practicing unlike game reps, I'm wasting time. Fights are a waste of time and energy. Absolute waste of time and energy. One of my favorite fight stories, there's a guy, a rookie left guard, got a fight over here. Him and a linebacker in a fight over here. Pretty soon, like we saw today, the whole team's down there, right? And I'm running the film back and there's a guy standing over by the water jug. He's the only guy over there by himself. It was the guy that started the fight. The whole team's fighting over there and he's standing over there drinking water. I'm thinking to myself, 'Hey, what are you doing? You started this.' [Former Baltimore Ravens OL] Jonathan Ogden was in there throwing blows with [former Baltimore Ravens LB] Ray Lewis and this rookie's over here drinking water. I said, 'You started the whole fight in practice' and so that's when fighting can get out of hand, right? Like I'm saying, he's not even fighting anymore and everybody else is invested in it."

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