Read the full transcript from HC Jeff Hafley 's postgame media availability on September 21, 2026.

So what did you learn about Caleb Douglas's ankle? Could it keep him out next Sunday?

Jeff Hafley: I think it's too early to tell. I'm really not sure yet. We'll see how that goes.

And Chop Robinson. I don't know if you can answer what phase he's advanced to in concussion protocol, but has he made progress?

Jeff Hafley: He has made progress. So he's in the protocol. He's exactly where we thought he'd be right now, so we'll see how he does come Wednesday.

How's Jaylen Wright?

Jeff Hafley: I would say he will be day-to-day. So we'll see what he's able to do on Wednesday.

And Kyle Louis, I didn't see him on the sideline. Was he there or he came back?

Jeff Hafley: No. He's back here today.

Did he have a procedure or anything like that?

Jeff Hafley: No.

As far as Bradley Pinion, I asked Sully on cut down day about him and Sully said that he had a conversation with him. Have you had a conversation with him since yesterday or how do you handle that?

Jeff Hafley: With him dropping the ball?

Yeah.

Jeff Hafley: Kind of like I handled it last night. He's punted for a long time and he's probably never dropped a ball like that before and I'm sure he won't do it again.

What was your evaluation of Austin Jackson over the last couple of weeks?

Jeff Hafley: Some good, some to get better. Plenty of opportunity for us to help him more. I think if we're honest and we look at – he's been up against Crosby and Bosa, I think those are two of the better players in our league. So he's had some good moments and I think just like anyone else, he's had some tough moments against them and there's times when we can help him out more as coaches.

Chris Bell's snap count was relatively low yesterday. How much of that is getting back into the swing of things, getting more familiar with the offensive scheme, getting back into football shape?

Jeff Hafley: Easy. It's all of the above and we had limited overall reps yesterday. I think it's a combination of all three.

What do you see as you look back at the first two games, that maybe are some of the positives that maybe people in the media or fans don't see when they look at just the results and say, OK this team's 0-2 and not playing good football overall?

Jeff Hafley: Overall, one, when you turn on the tape, there's an element of toughness in how hard we're playing that jumps off the tape and I hope everybody sees that. And every person I've talked to in this business, whether it's a coach, whether it's a scout, whether it's somebody from an opposing team, a coach from another team, it jumps off the tape and that's really important to me. We have to establish that and we have to build off of that. And when you turn on the last couple plays of the game on both sides of the ball, they're playing just as hard as they did on the first and those are things that we can control. Our run defense, I thought we played really good run defense against one of the better rushing offenses in the NFL yesterday. I'm not talking about the scrambles, we got to clean those up. Purdy, I think, was their leading rusher and I think McCaffrey had about 10 carries for 20-something yards. Their longest run, real run in the game, was an 8-yard run on play 50. So I thought we cleaned up the run defense. Really, even in the first game, I think their average was like 3.4 a carry. When you have 37 rushes, you're going to get your yards. We're playing better against the run. Still with room for improvement. It's not where we want it to be, but I thought that was a step forward yesterday. As far as the offense goes, we ran the ball better yesterday, and that was important to see. We moved the ball in that first half down the field on every single drive, and we should have had 13 points against a really good team in that first half. It should have been 14-13, and it wasn't, so it wasn't good enough. But when you're looking at things to build off of, those are them. Obviously there is a lot to work on.

What has Malik Willis done well in these first two games? What would you like for him to get back out?

Jeff Hafley: I think there's moments when the ball's out on time. He's been able to extend plays. He's been able to take shots down the field. He's been extremely accurate. He's kept drives alive with his legs. I just think it's the consistency right now and it's just getting comfortable with the guys around him and getting in rhythm. So the drop back pass, which unfortunately we've been in two games where we've needed to drop back and pass for the latter half of the second half, and when they know you're going to drop back, it's going through the progression, it's being on time, it's having the receivers be on time. I think those are the things early in the year there's a lot of quarterbacks working on. We've played two games and I'm excited to see him continue to improve. I know he's working really hard at it and it's going to take all 11.

I saw a picture of postgame of Kadyn Proctor interacting with Trent Williams on the field. I'm just wondering – I don't know what was said between the two – how valuable can that be for a rookie to be able to pick the brain of an All-Pro like Trent?

Jeff Hafley: I mean, I didn't see it. So that's a great question if you get a chance to talk to him, but it can be very valuable. It's one of the best – best to ever play the position at his position and be interesting to see myself when I ask him what he had to say to him.

Without speaking on specific positions, I was going to ask you if your tape review led you to conclude that maybe you should make lineup or rotation changes at any position. Were there any positions where you said to yourself, we're just not good enough here, I think I'd like to change the personnel, use someone else?

Jeff Hafley: I think we have to make sure that there's constant competition and if that means someone plays more or less as we evaluate the tape, yeah. I think there's certain positions where I'd be lying to you if I didn't say that there was those conversations and that we need to continue to have those conversations.

What did you see from Michael Taaffe yesterday? I think he had the team high nine tackles and how many of those were good tackles in the offense as opposed to on the last line of defense?

Jeff Hafley: There were both. He's a very instinctual player who is around the ball quite a bit. He's physical. He's a good tackler. So from that aspect, I thought he did a really nice job. And then there's some things as a young player, just like all these other rookies that are playing, that he's going to clean up and we're going to help him do that. He's a guy that I'm really pleased at the way he's playing. But I still think there's – which is exciting – there's a lot of room to improve for him and a lot of the young guys around him.

The singular most concerning thing in the secondary for you is what? Is it communication, technique, something else? What's the biggest concern?

Jeff Hafley: Just from yesterday's game, I would probably say the communication. We had some busts that are very unlike us that I haven't seen in practice, I hadn't seen in camp. So we need to help each other out more back there and communicate more back there. That starts with coaching and then down to the players. So we looked really hard today to try to figure out why that happened, because it has not showed up. So clearly that was the biggest issue yesterday was the communication.

I was trying to watch some of those big chunk plays and I was trying to figure out what went wrong on those plays? Obviously it's hard not knowing what the call was. So is there any context you could provide as far as like say the couple that went to George Kittle? How did he get open over the middle and the touchdown? Is that Willie Gay Jr. supposed to stick with him or was he expecting someone else to be there?

Jeff Hafley: Yes, some of those were communication. It was, we didn't have a guy where they were supposed to be. We got into the wrong call or we didn't cover our man. So all of the above. Which is the stuff that, again, it's just kind of surprising because it hasn't been like that. So something was off and we got to go back to work and fix it.

We haven't seen that many rollouts or boots with Malik, has there been a conscious decision to have him operate in the pocket as much as that?

Jeff Hafley: A lot of the play pass we've gotten him out of the pocket, but then there's certain times versus certain defensive ends that you're not going to want to boot or roll out to, and we've happened to play some pretty good ends right now. But those are a big part of what we're going to do and we'll continue to.

Regarding the team's spirit and mentality, I know it's only been two games but do you rely on the team captains to say something to them or do you just kind of let this go and say it's only been two games, I don't need to tell them to keep their mentality up?

Jeff Hafley: The way we're building this thing right now is win or lose, we're going to come in and there shouldn't be a difference. You can't change who you are. You can't let circumstance dictate your behavior. If you let circumstance dictate your behavior, then we have the wrong guys. Whether we win or lose, we got to come in. We got to look really hard at the film. You can't be hanging your head or moping around or anybody afraid to say hello to me or be themselves with me. We got to look in the mirror, we got to coach really hard. Win or lose, we got to do it again, right? Unfortunately, we've lost, so we've got to get better and we've got to fix it. Like I said, watch the last two plays of the game and you'll get the answer that you're looking for. But this team is going to be built, the foundation is going to be laid where we're not going to act a certain way based on what happens to us. And that's really important to me and to us.

What will be key in cleaning up a lot of these penalties?

Jeff Hafley: You got to look at all of them, right? Are some a lack of focus? Are some you're just getting beat and you're grabbing a guy? Is this some fundamental and technique? It's just, it's not even the amount of them that are jumping off, it's the timing of them that they're jumping off. It's every time we cross the 40-yard line yesterday, we were putting a really tough situation. Look that's been stressed. And are there some young guys making those mistakes? Yeah, there are. Is that an excuse? No, it's not, not anymore. We're in Week 3 and we've got to coach that really hard and we got to emphasize that really hard. It's the pre-snap ones that can't happen and that's disappointing to me and we clearly need to fix that. The stuff that happens in between the play, the hold here, the illegal contact when you're trying to be aggressive and jam a guy, those kind of go through the flow of the game. But it's the ones where you're in the critical situation where you have to have a hyper-focus and execute your job, whether it's on two or whether it's lining up and not covering up a tight end. Those are the things we got to get going on. There has to be a sense of urgency with that, and I'm not happy with that.

There was a report that the team signing Bills linebacker Andre Jones Jr. off the practice squad. Can you confirm that?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, that's the plan right now, talking to Sully so we'll see how that goes.

Was that something that was fueled at all by wanting to improve special teams play primarily?

Jeff Hafley: I think it's fueled by both.

With Jalen Tolbert, he's one of those veterans you'll occasionally see on an inactive list as a body of work in his career. How has he handled it and do you feel like he's still keeping himself in tune to step in if needed?

Jeff Hafley: 100%. I had a great one-on-one talk with him. We randomly ran into each other and I pulled him aside and I just told him how much I appreciate it and how much he's embracing his role right now. That doesn't mean he's accepting the fact that that's his role right now, but I told him his time's going to come and we're going to need him. And right now his job is to practice as hard as he can to continue to get better on offense, on defense. His job right now is to be the best teammate he can be to help some of these young guys who are unfortunately, for him, are playing ahead of him but that's part of being on an NFL roster and understanding your role. But his time will come and I truly believe that. And I have a great admiration and appreciation for how he's approached it and how all our guys are handling everything right now who are in roles like that.

We've talked about the communication of the back end a little bit, the Niners stress that for any defense they face, is there some benefit early in the season to get a tape like that out there to teach a young team from a perspective of an offense that can challenge you in so many ways?

Jeff Hafley: What do you mean?

Compared if it's later in the year where you play a team like that puts on a tape. Is it better to have it in Week 2 so you can say, "hey, this is where teams are going to stretch and we can correct it," from now early in the season compared to later on?

Jeff Hafley: We practice against this stuff with Bobby all throughout training camp and OTAs, which is why I was surprised. Bobby stresses us in practice. Bobby stresses us in training camp. We just got to figure out why it happened in this game and fix it.

This week is the home opener fans are coming back to see a team that's currently 0-2. What would be your message to the fans?

Jeff Hafley: It's the first home game. Get out and support the team. Make it loud. We've played two games, right? We got a team that's young, that's giving everything that they have and I can't wait to get them in the stadium and give it everything that we have for the fans and for the city. I wish we had already played a game at home. It feels like forever and I'm fired up to be in there.

Going back to Austin Jackson, you mentioned the elite competition that he's faced in Bosa and Crosby, do you chalk it more up to the fact that he is facing these elite guys versus maybe a potential regression on his end? Or how do you see the totality of the work?

Jeff Hafley: Chalk what up?

The lackluster play. It hasn't been up to what we've seen in the past. Is it just a very small sample size because he's facing Crosby, he's facing Bosa, two guys that are the best at their positions?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, I'm not talking about that. I'm not saying that there's a lackluster play. I'm saying there's an inconsistency where he's had some good moments and he's had some moments just like the rest of us. And then there's been moments where, yeah, I mean that's kind of why I answered your question the first time. And I appreciate the follow-up with it, but it's exactly like I said to you the first time.