In the post-Ray Rice video NFL, new head coaches and General Managers are regularly asked about how their teams will handle any such incidents involving players on their roster.
Some espouse zero tolerance, although that can prove tough to live by as Giants coach Ben McAdoo learned with kicker Josh Brown last year. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan and General Manager John Lynch got an early chance to show their response after cornerback Tramaine Brock was arrested on a domestic violence count last week.
The 49ers released Brock the next day, a decision Shanahan says the team felt “we had to make” but that it wasn’t one that would necessarily be the same if and when another member of the team should find himself in trouble with the law.
“Yeah. I don’t really look at any absolutes,” Shanahan said. “I think every situation is its own situation. So, you’ve got to look into everything, you’ve got to talk to the people, find out what happened, and not all the time you can get all the information which is what makes it tough, but you can’t just lump those all into the same category. You’ve got to talk to people when you’re dealing with people’s lives and you’ve got to get to the bottom of the truth and then go from there.”
Releasing Brock — who Shanahan called “a starting corner” — leaves the team short a corner who was projected to play a major role on defense, which obviously wasn’t enough reason to overlook whatever information they gathered about his arrest. Shanahan said it also wouldn’t change the way the 49ers evaluate players when it comes time to make picks in the draft because “you want to make sure you’re taking the best players.”