Grant Cohn Interviews Nick Mullens, Richie James Jr., Ross Dwelley and Kyle Shanahan of the 49ers

[Music] ross the offense really struggled the last couple of weeks constantly shuffling in new players to the lineup how has the mini bye week helped and how how have you guys played in practice the past couple of days the offense i mean i think it just helps in general to have a few more days just to to vibe and kind of gel with one another because like you said we have had a lot of new pieces um and we've been practicing really well you know we haven't missed a beat in practice everything's just uh you know kind of going the same as it was when we had all those guys up you know so we're all we have excuse me we all have been just been stepping up and it's been looking good just kind of knowing the opportunity is going to come eventually um just it obviously comes with time and patience and how the business works um that's probably the thing i kind of continue to keep in my head as we go along this process richie you said you understand how the business work works how does the business work why did it take you this long to get this opportunity it's the business it's like you know what this is business you know how i go man uh pics everything is happening so you know i go robert how beneficial were those extra few days off following back-to-back road trips with a thursday night game right after that those are they're always always beneficial um the the bad part about thursday night is that it hits too quick especially for the players uh there's nothing better than winning on thursday night football so wish we would have been able to do that but to get anytime a break were especially for the players they just uh you can always feel their energy when they come back to practice on a wednesday thursday uh defensively i thought we had two fantastic practices and uh just feeling our speed our energy our communication just they were alive and that's uh you that's a direct correlation to the to the break that they got so it's very very beneficial and um not to look ahead and pass this this particular game obviously but having the bye week it'll only be better for them to to surge towards the second half of the year robert stala said yesterday that the defense really responded well to the mini bye week and practiced extremely well on wednesday and thursday does that mean that the offense didn't practice well how did the offense practice and how did it respond to the minibike um you didn't ask all how the offense practiced all right that's no i thought the offense had a good practice i mean i think it's more of the intent of it i mean not every we card stuff that doesn't mean our stats were good or out there not that we take them it doesn't mean that we complete every completion but it's more how you go about things and after the tough loss after a few days off i mean we've all coached a while solid myself and those are the times where it's like hey we got to get these guys up it's going to be hard to get them going and we it wasn't that way i'm sure that's i didn't hear solve i'm sure that's why you talked positive about the defense yesterday because i mean they on wednesday and thursday it would have seemed if you just watched guy's demeanor watch guys sign the silent tape it would look like we are going we're working our butts off and things are going well nick i forgot my question let me come back to you sounds good man no worries ross i can imagine this season has been really hard especially compared to last season which i imagine was extremely fun at this stage where you guys are at four and five you're gonna have to go on a little run to make the playoffs what gives you guys confidence that you can pull this off i'm just the guys we have in the locker room we talk about all the time coach shanahan talks about it just we have a lot of character on this team um and we're never gonna not fight um and we're kind of at four and five right now we're kind of right on the on the hump of either going worse or getting a lot better and we're we're definitely looking forward to getting a lot better and uh taking the team in a positive direction okay got it all right nick i've noticed that kyle shanahan seems to call much fewer negative yardage throws for you than for jimmy garoppolo i'm talking shovel passes wide receiver screens anything that when the ball doesn't travel past the line of scrimmage so what i'm asking you is have you told kyle that you're that you don't feel as comfortable with those negative yards passes and you don't want him in the game plan have you had that discussion with him uh no not at all i trust the place that coach shanahan calls and i just do my job to best of my ability i have not had that uh discussion and those plays are dependent on the weak you know sometimes they're good depending on the game plan and what which opponent you're going against as well one more question um how what kind of chemistry do you have with mick mullins i imagine you two practice together a lot and what does he do well me and nick go go way back to like three years ago my rookie year uh in his second year when we were on the practice squad together um for like the first seven weeks of my rookie year um you know so we know each other super well um we have a lot of really good chemistry together in terms of what he does well he does a lot of stuff well he's got a great arm um he knows how to read defenses and read coverages and just overall knows the playbook like the back of his hand so if you ever got a question or you got to know like what your job is on a certain play like he'll tell you right off the bat and just won't miss a beat robert this is a great offense you're going up against last season it seemed that aziz al-shayer in particular in coverage gave up a few big plays that's why i think guys you could correct me if i'm wrong how has he improved since that game a year ago aziz aziz has gotten better with regards to just having a a good command of the defense he's he's gotten a lot more middle linebacker reps in terms of practice and all that so he can make every check he can make every call he's very very intelligent and he really does a really good job for the other 10 players and giving confidence that they can go do their job he gets close calls out of his mouth he gets coverage is communicated so he does a great job there and so um he has done a really nice job improving from year one to year two and i only think he's gonna get better he hasn't even scratched the surface yet uh with what he's capable of he's just again it's same thing a lot of things uh pop up for some of these young kids and they you know it's uh he's one of them that can see it and even though he may have made a mistake he doesn't make the same mistake twice and so he will continue to get better with the more with more reps that he gets

Channel: Grant Cohn

Views: 7,253

Rating: 4.9391637 out of 5

Keywords: Nick Mullens, Richie James Jr., Ross Dwelley, Kyle Shanahan, Robert Saleh, Grant Cohn, San Francisco 49ers

Id: c3-dnQEqvy4

Length: 6min 34sec (394 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020