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Will the 49ers Become a Pass-First Team?

The 49ers offense was excellent in 2023, but it was a run-first offense, and it didn't perform well in the Super Bowl. The running game got shut down. Doesn't their offense need to evolve?
Grant Cohn|
May 10, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan watches during the
May 10, 2024; Santa Clara, CA, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan watches during the | Robert Kupbens-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers have a conundrum on their hands.

They currently have the most expensive wide receiver room in the NFL. And next year they'll have one of the most expensive quarterbacks in the league when they give Brock Purdy a contract extension. And yet last season they threw the fewest passes of any team in the NFL. Kind of strange.

The 49ers offense was excellent in 2023, but it was a run-first offense, and it didn't perform well in the Super Bowl. The running game got shut down. Doesn't their offense need to evolve? As they spend more and more of their resources on the passing game, wouldn't it make sense for them to, you know, pass more?

Just one year from now, the 49ers will spend an average of roughly $100 million per season on a quarterback and two wide receivers, assuming they extend Purdy and Brandon Aiyuk and don't trade Deebo Samuel. So eventually the 49ers will have to pass frequently, right?

I wouldn't count on it.

Even in 2016 when Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, and they had Matt Ryan and Julio Jones in their primes, they still ranked just 26th out of 32 teams in pass attempts. And that's because Shanahan is a run-first coach with a run-first system, and so was his father.

Shanahan's passing game works best when the defense expects him to run. That's why his offensive linemen all are run-blocking specialists and his play-action passing scheme is so effective. His drop-back passing scheme isn't nearly as good, and his offensive linemen struggle in pass protection.

As long as Shanahan is the 49ers head coach, they always will be a run-first team no matter how much money they spend on passing.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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