Sports

San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan attributes some of his team's struggles last season to coming off a loss in the Super Bowl. Which means that explanation won't fly this year.

Shanahan said that a year ago, his players were worn down from a full postseason that ended with a heartbreaking overtime loss in Super Bowl LVIII. But this year, his players had a full offseason after going 6-11 and missing the playoffs, and he's not going to accept anyone not being completely read to go.

“The way I addressed it the most, was at our last meeting in January,” Shanahan said, via NBCSportsBayArea.com. “I just told the guys, I talked about how the season ended the year before, and how when I felt them all come back. I felt guys weren’t ready to come back and I understood that. But I told them how I really won’t understand it this year, not that that was right or wrong, but I couldn’t comprehend it. We’re off five weeks earlier, we all know how disappointed we are. And a lot of us have played a lot of football here.”

Shanahan's 49ers have lost the Super Bowl twice, and both years they followed that with a six-win season. After their 6-10 season in 2020, they bounced back and made the NFC Championship Game following the 2021 season. Returning to winning form is the kind of response he expects from his players this year as well.

Inside the NFL is on the outside looking in, again.

A must-watch highlights repository in the days before the Internet, Inside the NFL has struggled in recent years. John Ourand of Puck reports that the show will be on the move, again.

The CW held the rights to the weekly program for the past two years. It has decided not to renew the show.

After an extended run at HBO, Inside the NFL spent 13 years at Showtime before a brief run at Paramount+. It's unknown where it will land in 2025.

As Ourand notes, there aren't many options. Ourand adds that the league has opened talks with "several interested parties," but no announcement is imminent. Some network may view buying the show as a price to be paid to otherwise have a good relationship with the league.

Still, the overriding question is whether anyone will watch. It never creates news, never moves the needle. Even with Bill Belichick on the show in 2024, it was a tree that fell in an empty forest. (Indeed, the only news it made last year came from the hiring of Belichick.)

If the show is going to survive, it needs to be ripped down and reimagined. Highlights are everywhere. Debates are everywhere. Interviews are everywhere. Inside the NFL needs to come up with a fresh approach that gives the audience something that it wants — and something that it can't get anywhere else.

In an ever crowded landscape of NFL media options, it's entirely possible that this is impossible. And the inescapa

ble conclusion could be that there's no longer a seat at the table for Inside the NFL.

The Raiders have had seven quarterbacks the past three seasons. Geno Smith, the team's new starter, arguably is better than any of them.

The Raiders acquired Smith in a trade with the Seahawks in March, providing the team some stability they haven't had at the position since Derek Carr left after the 2022 season.

"He’s great. Geno is literally like a second coach," offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said, via Ryan McFadden of ESPN. "When you're in that room with him and [quarterbacks coach] Greg Olson, there [are] a lot of ideas going around.

"His football acumen is really off the charts, and it's impressive to be around him."

Smith calls Kelly in the evening after practice to discuss the day's work, and Kelly picks Smith's brain about how Smith's former offensive coordinators, Shane Waldron and Ryan Grubb, might handle certain situations or call plays.

Smith has seen a lot in his career. He went from getting drafted by the Jets in the second round in 2013 to stints as a backup with the Giants, Chargers and Seahawks before finally getting a second chance when Seattle traded Russell Wilson to the Broncos in 2022.

He completed 68.5 percent of his pass attempts for 12,961 yards, 76 touchdowns and 36 interceptions in 54 games in Seattle.

"There's not a lot of guys that have shown that resiliency," Kelly said. "He can be so relatable to everybody, because he's kind of lived that life. He's been a high draft pick, [but] he's also been a guy that has been told that a team doesn't want him.

"The fact that he's done it and come out to be the way he is now is a testament to him. He's special."