Kyle Shanahan Has Delivered The Line Of NFL Draft Week
By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston
BOSTON (CBS) -- It's the week of the NFL Draft. Things are getting crazy.
Team X wants to move up. Team Y is gunning for a certain quarterback. Don't be surprised if Team Z trades spots with Team X to totally stun Team Y. And let us not forget: Prospect X will get passed on by more teams than anybody anticipated. It will all make for some great theater.
It's a wild time, and every NFL reporter is in full-on scoops mode trying to share every single nugget and rumor and whisper that's floating around in the NFL ether.
With all of that mayhem going on, sometimes you need somebody to provide some proper perspective.
Enter Kyle Shanahan.
The 49ers' head coach is ready to have a big week. His team jumped up into the third spot in the draft, thus poised to nab a potential quarterback of the future, someone who can run Shanahan's fancy-pants offense for the next decade-plus. The 41-year-old is no doubt getting tingles in his toesies at the thought of this long-term marriage between himself and whoever that QB may be, whether it's Mac Jones, or Justin Fields, or hey, even Trey Lance.
Or so you'd think. As it turns out, instead of getting excited for the long-term future of his team, Shanahan isn't taking anything for granted. Like, literally, not a single thing. Not a single day, or even a single breath.
When asked if he can guarantee that Jimmy Garoppolo will still be on the roster after the draft concludes this weekend, Shanahan said it's time to calm down with regard to making any guarantees about anything.
"I can't guarantee that anybody in the world will be alive Sunday," Shanahan said. "So I can't guarantee who will be on our roster on Sunday. So that goes for all of us."
Damn, Kyle. It's a freaking Monday out here, man. We're all trying to get through the day here. We don't need that kind of weight dumped on our chests, you know?
Obviously, Shanahan's doing his part to keep his cards close to his vest. It seems fairly obvious that the Niners moved from the 12th spot to the third overall pick in order to take a quarterback. And it seems equally obvious that it would make no sense for the Niners to give $25 million to Garoppolo to be the backup to a rookie. And so it seems as though a trade or release of Garoppolo is imminent and inevitable.
Ah, but such is the danger of counting one's chickens too soon. Indeed, nothing on this earth is inevitable, not even the dawning of a new day.
It's a good reminder, amid all of the normal hullabaloo and pandemonium of draft week, that nobody knows anything about anything. Let's all just hold hands and hope we're fortunate enough to see tomorrow.
Thanks, Kyle. We really needed that.
