Super Bowl LIV is still four days away, but the San Francisco 49ers are already looking sharp and ready for the Kansas City Chiefs with two practices to go this week.
“It’s awesome,” head coach Kyle Shanahan told reporters Wednesday. “I wish the players could have two weeks every week to do a game plan. I mean for them to come out on a Wednesday today and to be firing on all cylinders, it’s not usually like that.
“Usually we put in a game plan Wednesday morning, and there’s a lot of mistakes. … You’ve got to kind of catch up as the week goes on. Usually you feel pretty good by Saturday. But when you get a whole week to go through it, you feel a lot better.”
Shanahan said he put in a few new plays Wednesday after pulling some out of the game plan last week, a luxury afforded by the two-week window leading up to Super Sunday.
And it wasn’t just the Niners’ offense that was clicking Wednesday.
“It went fantastic actually,” cornerback Richard Sherman said. “Today was one of our better practices, I would say. I’ll leave it up to the coaching staff to say, but everybody was really executing. It was a really sharp day.”
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid’s teams have been historically outstanding after a bye week, going 18-3 in the regular season and 5-2 in the postseason during his time in Kansas City and Philadelphia.
Many credit that record to extra time for the offense to prepare, but Sherman sees the sword cutting both ways in this case.
“You hear all this talk about giving a team all this time to prepare, but you give a great defense this much time to prepare, it’s going to be sharp,” Sherman said. “Guys are gonna be on the details. They’re gonna be on every indicator, every personnel adjustment, every adjustment we make defensively.”
As expected, the 49ers are mostly healthy, with only three players limited by injury on Wednesday’s report: running back Tevin Coleman (shoulder), linebacker Kwon Alexander (pectoral) and safety Jaquiski Tartt (ribs). Alexander and Tartt are both expected to play, as they have throughout the playoff run, while Coleman has a shot despite what looked like a serious injury sustained less than two weeks ago.
“Tevin looked good today,” Shanahan said. “… He’s running very well, like he always does when he’s healthy. So we’ll see as the week goes how much the pain tolerance and stuff is for his shoulder.”
Whether Coleman is able to play or not, the 49ers feel comfortable spreading the rushing workload around. Raheem Mostert erupted for 220 yards and four touchdowns in the NFC Championship Game against Green Bay, but Shanahan said he has faith in every back.
“I go into games not truly set on, ‘Hey, this guy’s going to get all of them,'” Shanahan said. “When we go in, our guys are so very similar, and they all could be our No. 1 back at any time, that it’s not as stressful of a decision as you guys would think, because they’ve all done such a good job.”
While San Francisco will likely have to throw more than the previous two games — in which Jimmy Garoppolo attempted just 27 passes — Shanahan said the Chiefs’ defense will dictate much of what the 49ers do.
“Our philosophy is just, it depends on what the defensive philosophy is,” he said. “We’re trying to attack in everything we do. Whatever their fronts are, whatever their coverages are.”
