INDIANAPOLIS — In ESPN’s lengthy report of friction within the New England Patriots’ organization, there was an anecdote about head coach Bill Belichick meeting with San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan at last year’s NFL Scouting Combine.
Shanahan confirmed Thursday at the 2018 NFL Scouting Combine that the meeting took place, though he didn’t go into much more detail.
“Just meeting with a lot of people down here, coaches try to get together and I just had a cup of coffee and hadn’t spent too much time with him,” Shanahan said. “Obviously, I think everybody in the world, let alone our profession, respects the hell out of him. It was cool just to be able to sit with him and talk football.”
Here’s the passage about the meeting from ESPN’s Seth Wickersham:
“At the combine this past February, Kyle, weeks into the 49ers job after being the offensive coordinator for the Falcons, met with Belichick for hours to learn from his team’s humiliating Super Bowl loss,” Wickersham wrote.
The Patriots traded Jimmy Garoppolo to the 49ers just eight months later.
“Belichick believed that Garoppolo would excel under Shanahan, and when he and Shanahan connected on the phone, Belichick offered the quarterback for a second-rounder,” Wickersham wrote.
