“I think the biggest thing … is, what is their baseline?” Kyle Shanahan said. “And we’ve got an idea of everyone’s baseline. When a guy can’t get to his baseline, why is that? Is it because he has an injury? Is it because he’s sore? Or is it because he just has dead legs and fatigue? Those are the things that help you look into it.”
“He does a really good job of educating the whole team and basically lays out everything he thinks that it’s going to take to win the game coming up,” Williams said. “He describes all the strengths of the people we’re playing, how they win, how they’re so successful doing what they do.
“It’s actually one of the most informative meetings I’ve been a part of. I’ve learned so much about football just in that meeting alone since I’ve been here, so I think that’s a huge help for the whole team — offense, defense and special teams.”
The “What it takes” meetings last about 45 minutes.
“It just gives you confidence in the game plan and in your coaches and teammates that we have it figured out,” Williams said. “Maybe there are some things that we’ll have to abandon or a new wrinkle that we’ll have to add against this certain team, and we all leave nodding our head, on the same page.”
“A tremendous amount of it is just leverage,” Hennessy said. “And you realize how important that is. I realized it early in my NFL career, because in college I just kind of got away with it. … I didn’t play a lot of guys who were super physically overwhelming, but in the NFL you learn you’ve got to play with speed, leverage and strength, despite not being huge.”