SANTA CLARA — The 49ers have been eliminated from the postseason, but coach Kyle Shanahan said that the season is far from over for the players, and the coaching staff, including himself. They now approach a very critical time of evaluation in looking forward to the next season.
“We have four games left,” Shanahan said. “We know we’re eliminated from the playoffs. So is this year over? This year has everything to do with, for me, next year.”
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SIGN UP HERE Before the players left for the bye a few weeks ago, Shanahan delivered a message to them about what they need to prove in the final weeks of the season. He reiterated how important the remainder is to determine who will be a part of the team going forward.
“Our personnel department, stuff like that,” Shanahan said. “They will be evaluating stuff that we will look at as coaches as the season ends, as far as the draft, free agency, possible trades. But right now we are evaluating the heck out of our team [and] our coaching staff.
“We've got four games here that are extremely important. There are a lot of tough decisions that we have to make at the end of this year. How guys look, how guys play, how they act.
“I want to know who’s going to be a part of helping us here and helping us turn this around and those decisions haven’t been made yet. They will be very critical here over the next four weeks.”
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There were high expectations leading into the 2018 season after the team closed out 2017 with a five-game win streak and a franchise quarterback on the roster. Shanahan explained that the disappointment and challenges that have come this season, have not changed his outlook on the bigger picture.
“We finished 6-10 last year,” Shanahan said. “And I’d love to be improving from this year. I also know it was hard work to get to 6-10, especially starting 0-9. I think we came in this year with a franchise quarterback and we lost him early in the season, which definitely makes that much harder.”
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Both Shahanan and GM John Lynch have discussed that they knew it was a rebuilding process that would take time.
They both downplayed the team’s success during the offseason when they received congratulations. Their six-year contracts are an indication that ownership also understood the time it would take to rebuild a successful team.
“I think we came here knowing that it was going to take some time,” Shanahan said. “I think the way we finished last year definitely accelerates everyone’s feelings and what they thought.
“But, by no means did I think we were coming into it this year and it was just going to be easy. I knew it was going to be extremely hard. The way it started off, it definitely made it a lot harder.”
While Shanahan believes that a team is never really as bad as a their losing record, there will still be many difficult decisions ahead. All of those choices will revolve around the future of the team.
“We’ve had some close ones that I believe we should have won,” Shanahan said. “That’s why I believe our record should be better than it is. But, by no means just because our record isn’t better than what it was last year does that change how I feel.
“We did some good things at the end of last year. We’ve had a number of setbacks. But, I think this is a necessary process to where we are going to go and some of the tough decisions that we have to make going into year three.”