New San Francisco 49ers wide out Marquise Goodwin spoke to the media and discussed many things from chemistry with his quarterback to wanting to work with Kyle Shanahan. This media session followed the practice where Brian Hoyer threw a deep bomb to the receiver after he separated himself from cornerback Keith Reaser.
Goodwin is known as a speedster but he wants everyone to know that he’s not a one trick pony. He was very clear to say that he can run the short routes as well as he can run the long ones. He’s been working on all of the small details, route running, technique and breaking.
Shanahan spoke about why he can be so effective:
He obviously runs real fast, so you want to move him deep, but guys who run real fast, if they only go deep, they’re very easy to cover, people who just run deep. If you threaten them with deep stuff, you can put him on a lot of other routes that also get him open. That’s what’s been fun with Marquise, because you haven’t seen a lot of it on tape.
Both Shanahan and Goodwin mentioned that it will keep defenses honest if they have to respect the long ball. The two have admired each other for some time, both having attended the University of Texas. Goodwin has been wanting to play in Shanahan’s offense because he believes Shanahan does a great job of forming great situations where players can be successful, like the deep pass during minicamp. Goodwin wants to put the work in and Shanahan recognizes his progress:
To move him all over, it’s new for him, its trial and error, but what I like about Marquise is he’s not embarrassed if he’s not used to something. He goes out there, puts it all out there. He’s not scared to fail. He tries his hardest, and routes that he wasn’t very good at on OTA one he’s much different now. You just want to keep putting him in those situations, challenge him and by the time you get to the season, you’ve kind of got an idea of what he does real good, what he doesn’t and you mash it up with the rest of your group.
He’s coming along well. He’s been fun to work with. I’ve watched Marquise since he was at Texas. He’s a guy I was really interested in coming out of college and just watching him at Buffalo the past last few years. I mean, everyone knows how fast he can run. When you can run that fast it’s scary for defenses, they have to back up. What makes Marquise unique is he can break down also. So, when you can run real fast and scare everyone, but you can also break down, it helps you get open because guys are scared of the touchdown. And once they start squatting on you, you have a chance to run by them and get an explosive. You do that once every few weeks and you’re probably not going to get it again, but it’s going to be a lot easier to move the chains because everyone is so scared of what he could do. That’s what speed does. You’ve got to work at it to get those deep ones, whether they work or they don’t, just the fact that you’re willing to do it usually puts pressure on a defense, makes them defend the whole field
Hoyer also talked about the pass he sent deep to Goodwin:
Yeah, it's like the old baseball commercial, 'Chicks dig the long ball.' Anytime you throw a deep ball, everybody gets pumped up. The good thing with us is that we have a guy like Marquise, and I'll even throw a guy like [WR] Aldrick [Robinson] in there, just guys who can stretch the defense. When I played for Kyle in Cleveland, we had [current Los Angeles Chargers WR] Travis Benjamin and we had [current Atlanta Falcons WR] Taylor Gabriel so we hit some of those deep balls back then with those guys. What it does is now the defense has to honor the deep ball. So now, we have routes where we send those guys deep and then we break them off and it's an easy throw. Those are low percentage-type throws and plus you’ve got to get the right look. We finally got it against the right defense yesterday. A lot of the times our defense is playing three deep so there's a guy in the middle of the field so you can't throw deep. Yesterday we got them in the right look and we capitalized on it. I think that's the major thing, but what it does show our defense and hopefully when we get to the season, other defenses is that we have a guy who can take the top off the defense, as [former NFL WR] Randy Moss used to say. The good thing that I've been really impressed about Marquise is that he's not just a guy who is going to run vertical and run deep. He has really worked on his route-running and yesterday he had press coverage, ran the guy off and ran a stop route and the guy was five yards away from him. So, to see a guy who is known just as a speed guy run intermediate routes and go across the middle and catch the ball, it's been a pleasant surprise.
Goodwin believes that the chemistry between he and Hoyer has been growing and will only continue to get better. They plan on working together during the break to continue building their chemistry. Goodwin is looking forward to developing the intermediate and short routes that are newer to him while he still scares the defenses by being that “home-run hitting” threat.