The San Francisco 49ers have seemingly had an issue with their special teams unit for years, which led them to fire former special teams coordinator Richard Hightower and replace him with Brian Schneider.

Still, the issues have persisted, and it seems that the 49ers have a problem arising in nearly every game, be it in the return game or with one of their kickoff units.

With the issues ongoing, how have the 49ers looked to improve that unit during their preparation on a week-to-week basis?

“We devote a lot of meeting time and a lot of practice time [to special teams],” head coach Kyle Shanahan said on Thursday. “We don’t double down on that, the time spent on it, because I feel like we do as much as we can. We have mixed a lot of guys in there. We do feel like guys have gotten better. But it only takes one mistake to cost somebody and it only takes one person.”

“You look at the Seattle game that we had last time, if you go back and you watch all the film, I thought that was one of our chances to have our best special teams game of the year. We caused two turnovers, got both of them, only one counted with the replay stuff. But we had one missed tackle on a big kick return and then they had that second one and you just have those two plays and it can cost you a game. I do think guys are getting better and stuff, but we’ve got to make sure that we don’t make those dumb plays where we can cause a penalty, where we can cause a turnover and those are the things that we’ve really got to clean up.”

The special teams aspect is always difficult on a team, as one minor mistake can be a significant swing, especially if it comes to the turnover department. But, the 49ers have also struggled in coverage at times, putting their defense in a sub-optimal situation to start drives.

With an offense as successful as San Francisco’s, specifically between the 20s, it’s a detriment when the 49ers gift their opponent a chance to climb back in with a turnover, such as Jacob Cowing’s muffed punt last weekend against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

One of the underrated issues has been injuries, propping players into more important roles and leaving others deeper on the depth chart into higher-leverage situations on special teams.

“It’s real difficult. You’ve got the choices you’ve got and as guys get, right when you get comfortable with somebody and, you start out the year playing a lot of young guys and you think they’ll get better as the year goes and then some of your vets get hurt and now those young guys are starters,” Shanahan said. “And so, that bumps other guys up and it hurts their development when they try to do both because they needed a lot more reps. But as they get more pressure on them for offense and defense, it’s tough.”

“And you’ve got guys like, even like [RB] Jordan Mason, he was one of our best special teams players last year and he’s been our starting running back for eight of the games until last week. So all that stuff is a trickle-down effect. You try to get practice squad guys up who you think can help, but they better, one guy gets hurt and they don’t know a position, that can cost you a game too. So all that, that’s challenges everyone has with special teams.”

Has it been difficult on San Francisco’s coaching staff, knowing they can only give an allotted amount of time to work on that unit?

“You also aren’t going to do a bunch of live stuff and full field stuff, because you might get a little bit better but you’ll hurt your team before you’ve even started,” Shanahan said about the way the 49ers practice their special teams. “So it’s stuff you just constantly harp on, constantly talk about. We get some of the mistakes we made earlier in the year, which puts all eyes on it and that’s why each little one we do now it only builds the pressure on those guys. But I do like how they’re kind of all committed to fix it and they’re all working real hard. But we’ve got to do better.”

For some reason, the problem has been recurring for the 49ers over the past few years, regardless of their personnel or their coaching staff. That needs to fix sooner than later, and especially this year, given the team’s error for margin is slimmer than in years past.