By now, you’ve probably heard that Brock Purdy and Deommodore Lenoir both spoke to their teammates at a team meeting on Saturday night.
But here’s why they spoke: Kyle Shanahan asked those two specifically to address the team. They didn’t volunteer. Shanahan volunteered them. And he hadn’t asked any player to speak at a Saturday night team meeting in quite a while, so this was a big deal.
“Just trying to change it up,” Shanahan said Monday on a conference call with Bay Area reporters. “Sometimes I’ll have somebody speak differently and just to switch up the routine a little bit. But I just, when you ask guys to speak, you want to make sure it’s guys that people truly respect and they respect how they play and how they carry themselves and how important the job is to them. And those are two guys who, we’ve got a number of guys like that on our team, but those two guys, I just know how much our team respects them on and off the field.”
Here’s why players respect Purdy and Lenoir: they’re two of the best players in the league at their respective positions, they put in the work and don’t coast on talent, and they’re accountable. Which means they’re everything Deebo Samuel hasn’t been this season. Samuel is a captain and supposedly a leader. But Shanahan didn’t ask him to speak.
It’s nice to see Shanahan empower two young players with the season on the line.
