Steve Young knows a San Francisco 49ers championship team when he sees one, and it begins in the locker room regardless if he’s a part of it or watching the camaraderie take shape.
But he’s taken one look at the atmosphere inside the 49ers’ building following the Sunday, October 24 loss to the Indianapolis Colts — and immediately described it as one that’s “fraught with terror” during this losing slide.
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The 49ers legend and 1995 Super Bowl winner spoke with the Tolbert, Krueger and Brooks Show on KNBR 680 AM/104.5 FM on Wednesday, October 27 and verbally illustrated the current state of the 49ers’ locker room as one that’s down and filled with fright.
“I sensed in the game on Sunday, just against the Colts, I always think about who has the more resilient locker room,” Young mentioned. “I’m watching the game, thinking about it, watching, and you can feel it. Maybe it’s just me, but I can watch and feel the resiliency. And I feel our locker room is not great, and I’m worried that it’s fraught with terror.”
Young then dove into the quarterback situation, revealing he thought rookie Trey Lance would be good to go, saying “because now, six weeks in, Trey would be playing if he was ready to play. It’s too late, so we’re in. Because he’s not ready, now Jimmy (Garoppolo), about two weeks ago when he hurt his calf, I watched him, and I just felt when he announced that he was going to be out a couple of weeks…that things have changed (in the locker room).”
Kyle Shanahan: “(Trey Lance) had an unfortunate injury and it’s lasting a little longer than expected.”
Trey Lance:
Locker Room is it’s own Heartbeat
Teams that make a title pursuit starts indoors before the team goes out on the field. That’s when players and coaches know who’s confident, who is all in and who is frustrated.
Young has been on 49er teams that had a strong bond before taking the field.
Steve Young was a magician.
🎥 via @NFLThrowback
#tbt
“You guys have heard me talk about the locker room has its own heartbeat, its own ecosystem,” Young said. “And in 2019, we had the best locker room in the league. And why we went to the Super Bowl was a lot of reasons, but the main reason was the resiliency of that locker room, and the leadership, and the people that came out of it, the people that spoke for it. They dealt with all the problems. They didn’t need the coach to come in and deal with it. They dealt with all the hard things that came up week in and week out.”
But now, Young isn’t seeing strong locker room cohesion.
‘Three-Ring Circus’
Like his favorite target during his S.F. years Jerry Rice, Young is another who touched base on the Lance situation.
He views it as something that head coach Kyle Shanahan has to embrace as a “three-ring circus.”
“As a coach, you can say, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it. We’ll keep developing the player.’ But remember, it’s a three-ring circus. It’s three rings,” explained Young. “The main ring is what’s on the locker room, the field, the guys, the coaches. But there’s another ring — the public, the fans. And then there’s another ring — the media. You think that the circus tent doesn’t cover all three and that you’ve got to deal with all three, you’re kidding yourself.”
Young believes the locker room mood has changed because of the QB situation with both signal-callers battling injuries. He’s a believer that the ‘Niners still have a Super Bowl roster. But that situation has led to a different locker room mood.
“The more damage that Jimmy has, then we have to move Jimmy, and there’s nothing being offered. Or Trey is damaged because he’s young and hasn’t played well. That’s why it’s fraught with terror,” Young said.
His complete podcast interview can be listened to here.
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49ers Great Steve Young Says Locker Room is ‘Fraught With Terror’