CrimsonCrew wrote:Jikkle wrote:I'll be interested in seeing what adjustments if any Shanahan makes this offseason.
I did feel defenses caught up not just with Shanahan but that Shanahan scheme in general since the teams that ran it seemed like they were down on offense compared to last season.
I felt like that went under the radar and to me the two big issues off the top of my head were defenses used our protections against us and the bootleg game was completely hard countered because they'd just have the DE chase the QB no matter what.
Not saying we need a massive overhaul in scheme because we still had a lot of issues simply due to the personnel but Shanahan is still going to need to spend more time in the lab than a usual offseason coming up with some counters.
Shanahan has been leaning into more drop-back passing concepts with Purdy instead of Garoppolo. That's fine in theory. I think Purdy is much better-able to execute that sort of gameplan than Jimmy was. But if we're going to do that, we need a better OL to give him time to get through his reads. And we need a more nuanced passing game. Shanahan is as good as it gets drawing up play-action concepts. But his drop-back plays just aren't on the same level. Hopefully he has the humility to see that (the failure to address Brendel at center does not give me confidence on larger self-awareness here) and really reinvent that aspect of the offense in particular.
The roster would need some work for a pass heavy offense to work which is why it was such a mixed bag last year.
Offensive line is a given since outside of Trent and Puni everyone else is designed to thrive in getting to the 2nd level in the running game.
But we would need the weapons to be tweaked as well. I feel it's overlooked but a large problem last season wasn't that we didn't have weapons we just had too many of the same kind. On paper it sounds like Kittle, Deebo, Jennings, and Juice are a lot to work with but they are all slow, big possession type of receivers.
For me in a perfect world Watkins and/or Cowling would be your speedy take the top off of defense guys. Aiyuk and Pearsall being your more traditional shifty WR types. With Jenning and Kittle being your big-bodied possession receivers with Jucie being off the field in obvious passing situations.
Ultimately I don't think it matters who is at QB with the way Kyle has constructed this offense it has to be good at running the ball to thrive. What Kyle needs to figure out is cleaning up the protection upfront and making sure guys are blocking who they should be blocking and countering the counters that defenses have had against some of our staple plays like throwing down the middle and bootlegs.
