Robert Saleh let a draft secret out of the bag this week, and it was not his secret to tell. The Titans head coach revealed that San Francisco planned to draft Cam Skattebo in 2025, and that Kyle Shanahan was the one pushing for him.
“Kyle loved him, and he ended up getting taken,” Saleh said.
The Giants Got Him at 105
New York took Skattebo at No. 105 overall. The 49ers, sitting behind that pick, went with C.J. West instead. Saleh was San Francisco’s defensive coordinator at the time, in his second stint with the franchise, which is how he had a seat in the room where the running back conversation happened.
The detail that stings is the margin. This was not a case of the 49ers liking a player they never had a real shot at. They had a plan, and a team drafting ahead of them executed it first.
Skattebo Has Made It Hurt
The Arizona State product has 527 rushing yards and six touchdowns across his first 10 NFL games, which is production that justifies the interest. He lost most of 2025 to an ankle injury, then came back and put up 81 rushing yards and a touchdown against Dallas in his Week 1 return.
Now imagine that player next to Christian McCaffrey. Shanahan has built his reputation on identifying running backs and on scheming two-back systems that make defenses declare early. A McCaffrey-Skattebo backfield is exactly the kind of thing he would have turned into a problem nobody wanted to solve.
Shanahan Called Saleh Out
Shanahan was not thrilled about the reveal, and his irritation is understandable. Draft rooms run on the assumption that what gets said inside stays inside, in part because a coach’s evaluations are proprietary information and in part because nobody wants their misses catalogued publicly.
Saleh is a head coach elsewhere now, so the practical damage is limited. But this is the sort of thing that makes front offices quieter around departing staff, and coaching trees survive on trust.
The Real Lesson Is About Running Back Value
There is a broader point buried in the anecdote. For years the accepted wisdom held that running backs should never be taken early and could always be found later. Skattebo went in the fourth round. He is producing like a player who should have gone earlier, and one of the sport’s best offensive minds wanted him badly enough that his own defensive coordinator remembered it a year and a half later.
The Giants found a starter at No. 105 because other teams talked themselves out of a position. San Francisco was apparently not one of those teams, and they still missed by a handful of picks.
Small Story, Real Consequences
None of this changes a game. But it does explain something about how the 49ers have looked at running back since, and it gives Giants fans a piece of validation they will enjoy for a while: Kyle Shanahan wanted their guy.
Saleh probably should have kept it to himself. He did not, and now everybody knows.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.