© Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports
Before it was Trey Lance, it was Matthew Stafford. And in those absolutely chaotic few weeks around the Senior Bowl, there was a mixed bag of reports surrounding the 49ers’ interest. It turns out, the most obvious answer was the correct one. The 49ers were clearly interested in Stafford, but Kyle Shanahan and co. got beaten to the punch by his longtime colleague, friend and rival in Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams.
As Shanahan broke down on the “Flying Coach” podcast hosted McVay and NFL Network’s Peter Schrager, he was in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, just down the road from where McVay sealed the deal with Stafford.
McVay, trying not to laugh, asked Shanahan how he felt when Rams traded for Stafford.
“You don’t want me to get started, dude,” Shanahan said. “That was frustrating.”
Shanahan said he’d known for the past two weeks that Stafford could be available, so he’d been seriously grinding Stafford tape.
“I remember looking through it because everyone was telling me it was a possibility and Stafford’s the man. I studied him hard coming out of college and you always play against him, so you know how good he is. But to know he might be available and to spend two weeks really watching him, yeah, he’s better than I realized.
“He was the man and he’s actually underrated to me, so I know how good of a guy you got,” Shanahan said to McVay. “I know how good he is a play action, I know how smart he is. Not only does he just have a big arm but he’s got touch and he knows where to go with the ball so I was trying to get involved in it.”
He said he was led astray by a call confirming that a Stafford deal wasn’t going to get done that night, and then promptly received another call telling him he was about to miss out.
“Someone who had knowledge on this situation, I remember I was talking to [Stafford’s agent Tommy] Condon to everyone to find out when it was happening and I remember Saturday I was so stressed out,” Shanahan said. “And finally we talked to someone, it was like seven at night, and they’re like, ‘No, nothing’s happening until tomorrow, enjoy your night.’ So I’m like, ‘Alright, I’m done. I talk to Mandy and I’m like, ‘Alright let’s go to dinner and have some drinks.’
Half an hour later, my buddy calls me, he’s like, ‘I’m just telling you, if you want Stafford, you need to get a hold of him right now.’
And I’m like, ‘What do you mean? We just talked to people, I can sleep on this, we’ll talk to him tomorrow.’
“‘I’m just telling you you need to talk to him right now.’
“I knew it and then 10 minutes later, it was all over.”
McVay tried to ease Shanahan’s pain, saying that the deal came together just as quickly from the Rams’ perspective.