San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan unsurprisingly came to the defense of rookie pass rusher Nick Bosa this week after last week's opponent in the Minnesota Vikings made some poignant comments regarding the first-year defensive end.
Bosa was flagged for a 15-yard penalty for an illegal blindside block on Vikings offensive tackle Brian O'Neill during last week's divisional round matchup while Minnesota believes that such a hit was a bit dirty.
“I think people say ‘cheap shot’ when somebody gets hit violently and to me ‘cheap shot’ means your intent is to try to hurt someone,” Shanahan recently said, via NBC Sports Bay Area. “And I don’t think he’s thinking about that at all. That’s a normal block in football for a long time. The guy wasn’t completely out of the play. It was a guy who could’ve made the tackle, and Bosa went and hit him. That’s a rule. You can’t do that right now. You can’t hit a guy in that position.”
The 49ers went on to defeat the Vikings at home en route to advancing to the NFC Championship Game against the Green Bay Packers.
“Basically got to set a screen, which means let him hit you and just take it,” Shanahan added. “That’s part of this game. That’s what you got to do. And that’s what we’ll coach him up to do because you will get a penalty for that. But to say it’s a cheap shot means you’re trying to hurt someone and stuff, and I know that wasn’t the case.”
The 49ers notably defeated the Packers earlier in the season while Green Bay will once again travel west to San Francisco for the upcoming matchup. However, the looming clash in the Bay Area hardly comes as a surprise as the 49ers and Packers finished the 2019 regular season as the top two seeds in the NFC playoff picture, respectively.
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