By admin 
The big news from the first day of 49ers training camp Sunday wasn’t what the players were doing on the practice field but who was watching.
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Head coach Kyle Shanahan observed roughly 20 to 30 minutes of practice standing next to general manager John Lynch a day after the team announced Shanahan would be out of commission while recovering from a car accident that caused him multiple injuries, including a broken hand, broken ribs and concussion earlier this month.
“I knew it would be tough to keep him away from there,” 49ers star left tackle Trent Williams said. “I know it’s going to be hard for him to get his rest. He’s not that type of person, so it doesn’t surprise me at all (that he was at practice).”
Shanahan was sporting sunglasses, which he doesn’t normally, and had a cast on his left hand. He exited the practice late in the session and walked to the adjacent weight room at the Santa Clara facility with 49ers staffers.
“I told him he had a great disguise with the sunglasses on,” All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner joked. “But he was good. It was good to see him out there. And he seemed to be in great spirits. … I knew he can’t stay away.”
Lynch said Saturday Shanahan would be away from his head coaching duties while he recovers from his injuries, and that Shanahan would go through the concussion protocol similar to what players go through. There’s no timeframe for his return, but Lynch said Shanahan isn’t expected to miss the Sept. 10 season opener when the team travels to Melbourne, Australia, to play the Los Angeles Rams.
“That’s not what we’re anticipating,” Lynch said. “That’s not what I’ve heard from the doctors. But, just like we talk about with players, the timeline kind of takes care of itself.”
The 49ers turned to long-time offensive line coach Chris Foerster to run the team in Shanahan’s place as acting head coach. Foerster spoke at a news conference after practice and said he’ll rely heavily on coordinators Klay Kubiak on offense and newcomer Raheem Morris, the former head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, on defense to help run the team.
For example, the team split into offensive and defensive meetings instead of having a meeting with the full roster as they would with Shanahan in charge.
“He’s been doing this longer than everybody in that locker room’s been alive, except for me,” the 38-year-old Williams said of Foerster. “So it’s like a hand-in-glove fit.”
Foerster, 64, has the added title of associate head coach, and has coached in the NFL since 1992. He worked previously with Shanahan in Washington while he served as offensive coordinator under his father, Mike Shanahan. There, Foerster coached Williams as a rookie in 2010 and they were reconnected when Williams was traded to San Francisco in 2020.
Foerster said he had a brief meeting with Shanahan before Friday’s practice but learned he would be acting head coach when the 49ers announced the accident on Saturday.
“When did the statement come out? That’s when I saw my name,” Foerster said. “I knew that we’d all have to pick up the slack.”
Foerster lauded Shanahan and the other 49ers power brokers for their belief in him. He joined the organization after an ugly departure from the Miami Dolphins in 2017 when he resigned after video surfaced of him snorting white powder, forfeiting reportedly one of the largest salaries for an assistant coach in the NFL.
The 49ers hired Foerster as a consultant in 2019 before promoting him to assistant offensive line coach in 2020 under John Benton. He was promoted to offensive line coach in 2021 when Benton left for the New York Jets. Foerster had run-game coordinator added to his title in 2022, and he was named associate head coach this offseason.
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Foerster was emotional when talking Shanahan’s impact on him on a personal level.
“I’m not afraid to cry, but the thing is, the guy’s family,” Foerster said. “I’ve known Kyle for a long time. He’s one of my best friends in the world, by far. There’s not many people that I call a friend. And, for a lot of reasons, Kyle’s one of them.”
Observations from the practice field
Between the lines, the practice didn’t differ much from when Shanahan was in charge.
New receiver Mike Evans made one of the plays of the day when Brock Purdy connected on a deep throw down the left sideline, layering the pass over top cornerback Deommodore Lenoir.
Fellow newcomer De’Zhaun Stribbling, the team’s first draft pick in the spring, caught a pair of passes from Mac Jones. The first was near the left sideline where Stribling had to work to keep both feet in bounds. The second was a sliding catch up the right seam.
Jones also threw two interceptions over the middle of the field, one to linebacker Jalen Graham after a deflection and another to safety Marques Sigle, who was among the three safeties rotating in with the starters throughout practice, along with Ji’Ayir Brown and Malik Mustapha.
Rookie defensive end Romello Height had a welcome-to-the-NFL moment when he was tasked with covering star running back Christian McCaffrey out of the back field. Quarterback Purdy noticed the mismatch and found McCaffrey immediately in the left flat. He made a cut inside leaving Height slipping to his backside along the sideline.
Height received the bulk of the snaps as the starting defensive end with Nick Bosa being held from team drills after tearing his ACL last September and 2025 first-round draft pick Mykel Williams on the active/physically unable to perform list with his ACL tear last November.
It was a busy day for McCaffrey, who predictably looked in midseason form. He seemed to have more touches in team drills than any other player and didn’t appear to have the limited workload the 49ers have talked about throughout the offseason. Jordan James and rookie Kaelon Black split time as his backup.
Bosa participated in individual drills but ran on the side during the full-team period. Bosa didn’t appear hindered while coming back from the knee injury, his third ACL tear dating back to high school.
Instead, the yearly tradition continued of players talking about how formidable Bosa looked after his typically-rigorous offseason workout routine.
“I see him every day. I couldn’t even tell that he had an injury or he came back from anything,” Williams said. “Most people with a knee injury that catastrophic, you can see something. You can see it in the atrophy and the muscle in the legs. You can see something. Bosa looks better than he did before he got hurt last year.”
The 49ers will be back on the practice field in another non-padded session on Monday before a “jog-thru” session on Tuesday.
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