Why the 49ers Weren't Prepared to Lose Both Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel

Perhaps Shanahan could work around the absence of one of them. But on Sunday in Cleveland, losing both made the 49ers' offense completely inept. Shanahan found no solutions.

Even an offensive genius like Kyle Shanahan couldn't figure out how to overcome the loss of two great players this weekend.

Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel both went down in Cleveland against the Browns. Those are two of the 49ers' best players, two weapons who factor heavily into Shanahan's game plan every week.

Perhaps Shanahan could work around the absence of one of them. But on Sunday in Cleveland, losing both made the 49ers' offense completely inept. Shanahan found no solutions.

"I mean, anytime you lose real good players like that, it's a challenge," Shanahan said on Monday. "But that's stuff you’ve got to go through. That's part of football. I just thought we made too many mistakes, missed assignments and stuff once that happened. When that does happen, you’ve got to put some guys in some different positions, stuff that you don't always put them through, but they're responsible for studying and that's on everybody. But also when it got to that situation, I thought we should have made it easier for those guys because I think it would've been alright if we didn’t lose those guys. But with the amount of mistakes we made in the game, obviously we had too much on them."

Translation: The backups weren't fully prepared to take over for the injured starters. Shanahan blamed the backups, saying it's their responsibility to study, which is true. It's also the head coach's responsibility to prepare his players -- not just the starters.

To Shanahan's credit, he acknowledged he could have made things easier on the backups who were filling in -- Jordan Mason, Elijah Mitchell, Ray Ray McCloud and Jauan Jennings.

Perhaps Shanahan is growing.