Niners Nation
Shanahan is regarded as one of the best play-callers in the NFL because he doesn’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole. He knows the advantage lies when McCaffrey and Kittle are matched up against Ernest Jones. That’s where the scheme, specifically all of the pre-snap motion, can help create mismatches that lead to a safety guarding Jennings or Pearsall. The Seahawks have two studs at cornerback. Great. Good for you. Let them line up against MVS or Kyle Juszczyk while the action happens inside the numbers.
That’s right, the game plan is the old “Throw it to your best players when they’re not being guarded by the other team’s best players.” Let’s see if it works.
For a team that missed the majority of its core offensive players in 2024, the San Francisco 49ers were surprisingly efficient last season. However, efficiency doesn’t lead to points when you don’t execute.
Brock Purdy, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle, and Trent Williams were on the field together for a total of 49 plays last year. Each of those came in Week 10 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In those plays, the offense averaged 7.3 yards per play with a 57.1 percent success rate. We can unfairly extrapolate that small sample size and show that those numbers would have led the league.
If McCaffrey’s calf holds up, we’ll see those four on the field in a couple of days. Each player is critical if the 49ers want to reach their peak, but the offense struggled mightily in 2024 without their future Hall of Fame left tackle.
At some point, Trent Williams will stop playing like an All-Pro. The 37-year-old showed no signs of regression when he was on the field a year ago. Next Gen Stats tracks the average time to pressure allowed. Williams led the league at 3.78 seconds last season. If you focus on Williams during the game, he often looks bored and unchallenged.
Sports Info Solutions tracks the percentage of “blown blocks” a player has. Williams’ 1.5 blown block percentage was lower than 2024 All-Pros Tristan Wirfs (1.7) and Penei Sewell (2.8). We didn’t see him during the preseason, but the 49ers getting the best player at his position back seems to be flying under the radar.
It’s Year 5 in a 49ers uniform for Williams. His 59.6 percent of snaps in 2024 was the lowest yet. Perhaps that’s why. Still, when he’s on the field, Kyle Shanahan can run the ball with the utmost confidence behind No. 71. The Niners averaged a full yard more per carry on designed runs to the left (5.2) with Williams.
The 49ers get their best player back. That peace of mind should allow their wild child of a quarterback to harness some of his aggression.
Brock Purdy has been the same quarterback since he’s been at Perry High School in Gilbert, Arizona, about 25 minutes from me. He’s a...
