“You definitely see opportunities,” 49ers defensive lineman Mykel Williams said. “But you’ve also got to create your own opportunities.”
As NFL tight ends enjoy a golden era, passing on lessons has become personal (paywall)
“Shanahan, the head coach in Washington from 2010 to 2013, once grilled Paulsen on offensive tackle protections out of worry the tight end might have to play emergency tackle in a preseason game. Paulsen answered every one of Shanahan’s questions correctly, then rattled off the assignments for the guards and center, too.
After that, Shanahan said Paulsen would always have a roster spot on any team where he was a coach. And after Paulsen’s five seasons in Washington, several of those Shanahan-tree coaches indeed shuffled Paulsen from building to building, staff to staff. In San Francisco in 2017, he and teammate Garrett Celek mentored the rookie fifth-rounder Kittle.
“I was so lucky,” said Kittle. “I knew (Garrett) as my big brother, and Logan would be our dad. … One thing I took from (Logan) was his second-level blocking mindset. He called it ‘the gallop’, which is when you are going through the defensive linemen to go block a linebacker or safety, to drop your hips and kind of gallop so you don’t cross your feet over. … No one had ever talked to me about that. Hearing him explain why we were doing it, it made so much sense, and it completely changed my mindset of blocking. I still do all of that stuff today.”
“So when you look at a quarterback in that situation, you gotta make sure he’s able to get rid of the ball. You gotta make sure he’s very conscientious of his depth and stuff, not just backpedaling and things like that. You gotta step up in there because the edges are too short, which does put a lot of pressure on your guards. And you gotta make sure that you take what the defense gives you when you can, get them to be a little aggressive when we got a chance for a bigger play. That’s when we have to be aggressive also.”