CrimsonCrew wrote:A few bigger picture thoughts about the direction of the team two games in. The team as a whole was bad this past weekend, though credit the Vikings for coming out and playing a great game.
Ultimately, I think Shanahan bears a lot of responsibility for this one. He's got a team full of stars, but the attention to detail isn't there, and that's something we've seen consistently throughout his tenure. He is a great high-level coach, but the further you zoom in, the messier it seems to get. As someone else noted, that's kind of strange in a control freak. Shanahan can be extremely detailed in terms of offensive play design, etc., but in other areas, he is too lax, and his team is too.
Extremely curiously, and something I didn't notice while watching the game, we only ran three play-action passes. That is bizarre. This is an offense that is predicated on the play-action pass. It helps our offense at every level by giving the defense more things to think about. Especially when we're missing a versatile weapon like CMC, I would have expected more play action rather than less. Facing a young defense this week, I think we need to go back to more of that. And we need to lean on runs up the middle.
Along those lines, Shanahan has been going to more of a drop-back game through the end of last season and into the early part of this season. I read that as a sign that he trusts Purdy in a way that he did not trust Garoppolo. However, his offensive scheme for the drop-back game is not nearly as effective as it is for play action. JT O'Suillivan frequently harps on this in his videos. It's not always the same thing. Sometimes - like in the SB - the blocking scheme up front doesn't seem to mesh with the play call. Sometimes the route concepts are muddled. Things like seven-stop drops have largely gone out of vogue in the NFL in favor of shotgun (why get the ball under center and drop back that far if we don't have the threat of a run?), but we still use them with some regularity. This is an area where Shanahan MUST improve.
There may also be an issue with audibling that we saw in this game. The Vikings seemed to catch on to our approach to calling audibles. If the D is in a single-high look, we audible to a pass. But what happened at times this week was after our audible, the defense would switch alignments. They were basically dictating our play call with their alignments, and then would switch. I love that Shanahan is letting Purdy audible, but we can't be so predictable in our adjustments.
We've got to clean some of this stuff up immediately. Even with CMC and Deebo out, we still have a lot of talent on offense. Any team would love to have Kittle as their TE. Even rusty, Aiyuk is still an above-average WR. Jennings would be the #2 on a lot of teams. Although Trent struggled a bit this week, the introduction of Puni appears to have solidified the OL to a degree (really want to upgrade Brendel, but it's not likely to happen this year). There's just no excuse for this offense to be struggling so much. Ultimately, I put that on Kyle.
Cohn on Shanahan's comments about the reduced rate of play action, with some of his thoughts.
https://www.si.com/nfl/49ers/news/why-the-49ers-are-throwing-so-few-play-action-passes-this-season-01j85hpyw7t4
Got to be honest, I tend to agree with Cohn on this one. Is Shanahan letting defenses dictate to him too much? Is he getting a little predictable? I don't have a huge problem going with more drop-back passing with Purdy as opposed to Garoppolo, but if we're going to do that, Shanahan really has to raise his game. Multiple people have noted that it's not an area of strength for this team.
