SANTA CLARA – Finally, coach Kyle Shanahan believed the 49ers were ready to anoint team captains.
On Monday, he informed the team there would be a vote on players whose jerseys would be adorned with the “C” patch for the remainder of the season.
“Last year I wanted to do it halfway through, and as we got there, I didn’t think our team was ready to vote on that,” Shanahan said on “49ers Game Plan,” which airs Saturday at 7 p.m. on NBC Bay Area (Ch. 3).
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“There weren’t guys who established themselves. I wanted it to be for the right reason, and not just a popularity vote. I went into this year thinking the same thing. I thought about doing it at the beginning of the year. We had some established guys, but things change.”
Things changed, all right.
The 49ers lost their centerpiece running back, Jerick McKinnon, to a season-ending knee injury a week before the start of the regular season. In Week 3, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, sustained a season-ending knee injury, too.
“So I wanted to wait, and I’m glad I did,” Shanahan said.
San Francisco 49ers
When the vote came in, the players elected DeForest Buckner and Richard Sherman as captains on defense, Joe Staley and George Kittle on offense, and kicker Robbie Gould on special teams.
The 49ers will have the “C” patches sewn onto jerseys for the first time since the 2010 season, when coach Mike Singletary chose Alex Smith, Vernon Davis, Patrick Willis, Eric Heitmann, Takeo Spikes and Justin Smith as the leaders.
A year ago, Shanahan decided against voting for captains as the 49ers were mired in the longest losing streak to open a season in franchise history. Although the 49ers have just one victory heading into their Week 8 game at the Arizona Cardinals, he believes strong leadership has prevented the season from completely falling apart.
“We are going through a tough time, and anyone can be a leader when things are easy, whenever everything is great. That’s not a problem for anyone,” Shanahan said. “But the true leaders come out when things are hard. And I thought our team was ready to vote on it.”
Shanahan acknowledged that it is not easy for a team to stick together when it continues to lose. But the 49ers have an opportunity over the next three weeks for victories, as the 49ers face the other three one-win teams – Arizona, Oakland and the New York Giants – in successive weeks.
“Losing is tough,” Shanahan said. “And it’s human nature, no matter how hard you work, when you’re not getting the results, people want to blame other people. And I do think we have the right type of guys here, where, yeah, people can feel that way for a second, because I think most humans do. But what can you control?
“You have to look in the mirror and do as well as you can and work on getting better. That’s what we’re trying to put in this building, and I think we have a number of guys like that. We’ve tried to do that and build those types of people in the year-and-a-half we’ve gotten here. And I think that is why we’re building this place to be a strong organization.”