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The Next Evolution of the 49ers Offense

Ever since Kyle Shanahan has coached in the NFL, his offensive scheme has been predicated on the play-action pass.
Grant Cohn|
Jan 28, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan waves to
Jan 28, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan waves to | Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

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San Francisco 49ers

The 49ers will bring back all 11 starters from their offense next season, but that side of the ball still should look decidedly different, because it's evolving.

Brock Purdy is entering his second full season as the starting quarterback, and teams are getting a better idea of how to defend him. They see that he has the accuracy and anticipation to destroy zone coverages, so they're playing more man-to-man coverage, as we witnessed in the Super Bowl. This adjustment will force Kyle Shanahan to evolve the 49ers offense.

Ever since Kyle Shanahan has coached in the NFL, his offensive scheme has been predicated on the play-action pass. He likes to put his quarterback under center, make him turn his back to the defense and carry out of play fake, which causes the linebackers to rush up to the line of scrimmage and leave a giant void behind them where the quarterback throws the ball.

Play action works much better against zone coverage than man coverage, because zone defenders all have their eyes on the quarterback. Man=to-man defenders all have their backs turned to the quarterback because they're chasing receivers around the field.

So if the 49ers anticipate facing more man-to-man coverage this season, we can expect them to react the way they did in the Super Bowl -- empty backfields, spread formations and lots of passes.

This could be the year the 49ers finally transition from being a run-first offense to a pass-first offense. And they have the quarterback to pull it off. They just need to improve the offensive line in the draft.

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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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