"He's a smart guy and works at it, so he's much further ahead now than he was last week," Shanahan said on Wednesday. "I expect that to be week-to-week to continue to get further ahead."

Garoppolo also assessed his progress. The quarterback has been hard at work getting a grasp of Shanahan's playbook and is eager to make his 49ers debut.

"I had a pretty good feel for what I knew and what I didn't. I'm trying to learn the whole thing as fast as possible. The faster we get there, the better."

Shanahan explained that should Beathard have gone down with an injury last week against the Arizona Cardinals, he had a separate call sheet strictly for Garoppolo. The list featured approximately 25 run plays and 20 pass plays, according to Shanahan.

He added that Garoppolo needed to know the verbiage for each one and know how to check out of each play if it wasn't a good look. Garoppolo proved he was capable of the task towards the end of last week which is why the 49ers didn't bring up Nick Mullens from the practice squad.

Even so, there still is no timetable for when Garoppolo might take over the starting job.

"Hopefully it's sooner than later, but again I'm not setting a date on it," Shanahan said. "I think I'm very eager too and excited to see him out there. That doesn't always mean that's the right decision, so that's what I'm trying to balance out. If I just went off impulse and feeling, I would have done that the very first day, the very first second.