I love Kyle Shanahan as a coach. I think he’s one of the best offensive minds in our game.
But winning games isn’t easy. Although there are issues every team deals with and things that go wrong that are outside the coach’s control, here’s why this season is so important for Shanahan:
The 49ers are 29-35 (45%) since hiring Shanahan in 2017, winning six games or less in three of four years.
I was heavily betting the 49ers before the 2019 season, having looked deeply at their 2018 season and saw things I liked. But after last season’s results, this 2021 season is vital for him.
Here’s the other thin line with coaching. Just at the 49ers:
Kyle Shanahan is 24-9 (73%) with Jimmy Garoppolo (18-14-1, 56% ATS), averaging 28.2 ppg.
Kyle Shanahan is 7-27 (21%) without Jimmy Garoppolo (14-20, 41% ATS), averaging 20.0 ppg.
Now look back at the other quarterbacks he’s worked with and the results Shanahan has been able to deliver as a coach:
2-10 (17%) – CJ Beathard
7-12 (37%) – Brian Hoyer
5-11 (31% – Nick Mullens
19-13 (59%) – Matt Ryan
0-2 (0%) – Johnny Manziel
0-1 (0%) – Connor Shaw
12-16 (43%) – Robert Griffin III
6-10 (37%) – Rex Grossman
5-8 (38%) – Donovan McNabb
1-3 (25%) – Kirk Cousins
0-3 (0%) – John Beck
15-12 (56%) – Matt Schaub
2-3 (40%) – Sage Rosenfels
There are several takeaways from these numbers. For starters, he’s worked with three true, solid pro quarterbacks (Matt Ryan, Kirk Cousins, and Garoppolo) and a whole lot of has-beens or never-weres. In the absence of one of those quarterbacks, however, don’t expect much from his offenses — at least, not from a win-loss perspective.
But if we want to zoom out to what he’s truly in charge of (the offense), here are the rankings of his offenses in what is most correlates with wins or losses, and that is points scored:
2020 – SFO: 21
2019 – SFO: 2
2018 – SFO: 21
2017 – SFO: 20
2016 – ATL: 1
2015 – ATL: 21
2014 – CLE: 27
2013 – WAS: 23
2012 – WAS: 4
2011 – WAS: 26
2010 – WAS: 25
2009 – HOU: 10
2008 – HOU: 17
In just two of the last eight years, he’s had an offense rank better than 20th in points scored. And when he has, they absolutely kick ass. Both years, they’ve made the Super Bowl. But when they haven’t, they rank below average in point production and they don’t even produce a winning record.
Esoterically this is ideal, as you’re ensuring better draft capital to build for a magical run. But most owners don’t think along those lines. They become impatient if a team isn’t winning for years in a row.
So 2021 is important for the 49ers. And it’s even more important for Shanahan.
Linemakers are expecting it to be a big year for San Francisco with a win total of 10.5 this year. That’s a huge improvement over their six-win total in 2020. It’s the second-largest improvement in wins for any team (Jaguars are projected to improve by 5.5 wins from 1 win to 6.5).
Looking back since 2010, we can run some numbers to show the historical context this puts the 49ers in.
The teams that are projected to have the top-5 improvement in wins do end up winning more games: they win 3.3 more games on average. But they win only 0.3 wins over projection and have exceeded their win total in 34 of 64 cases.
There have been 23 other teams projected to win at least 3.5 more games than they did last year. These teams win 0.7 more games than projected, but only 12 of 23 actually exceed their win total. But none of these teams were projected to win double digit games.
In fact, over the last decade, there has been only one team that was projected to go from a losing record to winning double digit games, the 2018 Packers. They won only six games in 2018 after winning seven in 2017, but they lost Aaron Rodgers due to injury.
If we relax the criteria and question how many teams had losing seasons and then were projected to have winning seasons the next year, there were 17 such teams. 10 of the 17 exceeded their win total. On average, these teams went from 6.1 wins to 9.4 wins, but those that did exceed their win total all won 11 or more games. That’s what the 49ers would need to do this year to exceed their win total.
The bottom line is, betting against such turnarounds has not been fruitful, but it’s exceedingly rare for a team to be projected by the linemakers to go from six wins to winning double-digit games. Yes, there is an extra game to play with this year, but it really shows how strong the perceived rebound is for the 49ers. They are favored in 14 games this year, by an average spread of nearly four points per game. The only games they aren’t favored in are road games within their division.
So if Shanahan badly needs a bounce back season, he may very well get one. He tried to make sure of that by trading a ton of future capital for the third overall pick.
To move up from pick No. 12 to pick No. 3, the 49ers traded two future first-round picks plus their 2022 third-round pick. (San Francisco did get three extra third-round selections when the Jets hired Robert Saleh and Washington hired Martin Mahew. They used one and just traded one, so they have one remaining in 2023.)
It was a big investment, but if quarterback Trey Lance ends up being what Shanahan thinks he could be, it’s well worth the capital. While the rest of the NFL saw it as a huge move, Shanahan himself didn’t see it as such, because he has seen the Rams and Seahawks in his own division make such moves in the past.
Per Shanahan: “Seattle trades two first-round picks away for a safety (Jamal Adams), a very good one. The Rams had done it for a corner. They’ve done it for a quarterback (Matthew Stafford). The three years prior to that they did it every single year for a receiver. … So you’re watching all this stuff, that’s why I didn’t see it as monumental as everyone else did. I probably would’ve 10 years ago.”
“But I’ve watched people make these decisions the last two years and it’s grown on me. I’m like, you know, this isn’t the biggest risk in the history of football like I always thought growing up. Just watching and assessing what the Rams and Seattle have. So when we knew we could move up to get a quarterback, it pumped me up, especially to do it early, so then you can lay out a plan and which direction you want to go…”
As discussed earlier, Shanahan’s teams have only hit their ceiling when they’ve had a bonafide NFL starting quarterback under center. Garoppolo hasn’t proven to be durable enough to be that guy. I can absolutely see the frustration in a coach as gifted and brilliant as Shanahan when he’s working with QB2s and QB3s. Garoppolo played six or fewer games in three of his four seasons in San Francisco. He simply has been either injury prone or unlucky. Garoppolo was reportedly bulked up this offseason to try and protect his body more than in the past.
It’s really difficult to evaluate last year’s performance because of the injury situation the 49ers found themselves in. Week 1, while Garoppolo started the season healthy, his top two wide receivers were both out. Deebo Samuel missed the game with a foot injury (he had offseason surgery to repair a fractured foot) and Brandon Aiyuk missed the game with a hamstring injury. The 49ers lost 24-20 to the Cardinals.
Samuel remained out until Week 4. George Kittle missed Weeks 2 and 3 with injury. Garoppolo missed Weeks 3 and 4 with injury. There were only two games the entire season where QB1, TE1, WR1, and WR2 played the entire game:
Week 6 win 24-16 vs LAR
Week 7 win 33-6 vs NE
They all started together in a Week 5 loss to the Dolphins by a 43-17 final, but in that game, Garoppolo was in his first game back after missing two games with a sprained ankle. To say he was ineffective would be kind. He was terrible, but he also wasn’t 100%. Shanahan benched Garoppolo at halftime and said after the game, “you could tell he was affected by his ankle. I know he doesn’t normally throw the ball that way, and he was struggling a little bit because of it.”
But it wasn’t entirely the ankle. Brian Flores‘s defense got to Jimmy G. There were other games Jimmy G struggled as well.
Collectively in 2020, Garoppolo posted the NFL’s best expected completion rate and the NFL’s 38th completion rate over expectation. These are Next Gen Stats based on player tracking data. It’s rare that a player ranks that high in expected completion rate and that low in completion percentage over expectation. It’s only been done a few times:
Dwayne Haskins in 2020 ranked third in xComp and 40th in CPOE
Jimmy Garoppolo in 2020 ranked first in xComp and 38th in CPOE
CJ Beathard in 2018 ranked first in xComp and 35th in CPOE
Colin Kaepernick in 2016 ranked first in xComp and 36th in CPOE
For starters, understanding that CPOE accounts for probability of a pass completion, based on numerous factors such as receiver separation from the nearest defender, where the receiver is on the field, the separation the passer had at time of throw from the nearest pass rusher, and others, it stands to reason these targets were to players that were far more open than usual and likely at a distance shorter than average.
Bottom line – Shanahan was getting Garoppolo great looks and he wasn’t connecting. That wasn’t anything new for Shanahan.
Look at where his quarterbacks have ranked in this metric for years:
2020: Garoppolo was first in xComp – 38th in CPOE
2020: Nick Mullens was sixth in xComp – 34th in CPOE
2019: Garoppolo was third in xComp – ninth in CPOE
2018: CJ Beathard was first in xComp – 34th in CPOE
2018: Mullens was 13th in xComp – 25th in CPOE
2017: Garoppolo was ninth in xComp – fifth in CPOE
2017: Beathard was 10th in xComp – 33rd in CPOE
Every single year in San Francisco, Shanahan’s scheme has gotten MULTIPLE quarterbacks to rank top-10 in expected completion percentage. The last three years, Shanahan has a quarterback rank top-3 in expected completion percentage. Yet the offense is still not living up to his expectations because these quarterbacks can’t execute well enough.
That has to be super frustrating. Continued injury problems coupled with continued well-designed offense getting wasted, and it was time for a change.
That change came in the form of a mobile quarterback, which adds a lot of stress on the defense.
Certainly, a quarterback in Shanahan’s system ideally needs to be accurate, progress quickly, and get the ball out to let the receivers catch in open windows and create with the space that Shanahan is intending them to have upon completion. Yards after catch are a big part of Shanahan’s passing game.
Additionally, the running quarterback brings production on the ground and in the passing game due to the threat of the run, even on pass plays.
As Shanahan describes it: “It’s that the defense goes, ‘Oh, they might keep doing this.’ And when they do know you’re going to keep doing it, it changes short yardage, it changes all situational football, and it kind of just slows down the game a little bit. But if that’s all you’re going to do, it’s easy to stop. That’s why you’ve got to have a whole other skill set. You’ve got to be able to play in the pocket too. I think that’s what intrigued me about Trey the most. Separate all the running stuff, I really enjoyed watching him as a quarterback. Yeah, it was at a smaller school (North Dakota State) or smaller division and, yes, it was only for one year. But in that one year, there’s lots of clips and lots of tape showing him playing the quarterback position at a high level. And everyone knows the bonus of the running. That’s what we’re trying to get done here. … He’s not going to have all the answers right away. I expect him to get better each year. But I know the stuff that’s in him, the horsepower that he has from a mental standpoint and physical standpoint and a throwing standpoint.”
Additionally, and it may seem counterintuitive, but for Shanahan, a mobile quarterback also helps deep passing. “Anytime you’re pretty much in shotgun or you’re in a pistol formation, the defense has to account for the quarterback. When you don’t have that, it’s 11-on-10 football (because no defender is specifically assigned to a non-running QB). And what I kind of like about the thought of having a quarterback who can attack that way is it changes the defenses you’re going against. And sometimes it can make it a lot easier on the O-line, the receivers, just some of the looks that you get because sometimes there’s two guys in the middle of the field, sometimes there’s one. But when you’ve got to account for the quarterback, you’ve got to use that guy. There’s never an extra guy, and that actually helps a lot more looks down the field. I think all of our quarterbacks can make the throws down the field, but which guy’s going to get the looks?”
He’s referring to Lance getting the best looks for downfield passing on account of how the defense has to adjust due to his threat to run the ball. And clearly, if we’ve learned anything from how Shanahan’s offense creates looks, he likes to get guys really open, and he wants the ball thrown to the open guy. That’s why his quarterbacks consistently rank so high in xComp and that’s why it’s going to be so useful for some of those targets to now be deeper but similarly open thanks to the looks that Lance can get.
The last true mobile, dual threat quarterback Shanahan was able to work with was Robert Griffin III. In his rookie year back in 2012, Griffin ranked third in EPA/att and fifth in CPOE. Griffin’s adjusted completion rate ranked second in the NFL. After three straight years of 4, 5 and 6-win seasons, Washington went 10-6 and made the playoffs.
Time will tell how early Shanahan will work Lance into this offense. Personally, I’m curious if we don’t get some type of enhanced Lamar Jackson usage when Joe Flacco was QB1, with some gadget type stuff for Lance before turning the team over to him entirely. I think Shanahan will use Lance in more packages sooner than the Ravens did with Jackson, but I bet he establishes something early. The logic is simple: Shanahan loves to keep defenses guessing, and wants to see how they react in order to draw up new things. If he locks up Lance for weeks, he’s not learning how to optimize his usage. So I expect more, sooner than we saw with Jackson.
What do we expect for the 49ers this season? Should we be as bullish as linemakers? More bullish? When Shanahan was asked if this year’s team can be as good or better than the 2019 team that made the Super Bowl, he responded: “I think our roster gives us a chance to be. But also with that year, it wasn’t that our roster was the best in the league, I thought it had the chance to be the best in the league and then we played like it. … We weren’t in a ton of close games because we were able to wear people down and kind of take them over by running the ball and then by our pass rush getting after them. … We never got beat very bad. … We had a chance to win all the games we lost, too. Just on tape and people studying us, I think what coaches would say is we were the best team. I felt like that showed up in the Super Bowl until there was about six minutes left. And (the Chiefs) had a couple of key third downs that I thought would’ve ended the game. And once they did get those key third downs, we missed a couple of key third downs. Once that happened and you do that against a team like Kansas City … it flipped fast. So you’ve gotta be the best all the way to the end. And we came up just a little bit short.”
What the 49ers have going for them in 2021 is the schedule. No team faces an easier drop in schedule difficulty of defenses than the 49ers. They shift from the third toughest schedule to the 19th toughest schedule. Their pass defense schedule shifts from fifth toughest to 26th toughest. This will help Garoppolo, Lance, or whichever other Shanahan quarterback lines up under center.
The pass defenses Shanahan’s quarterbacks have gone up against during his tenure:
Fifth most difficult in 2020
10th most difficult in 2019
12th most difficult in 2018
Most difficult in 2017
If Shanahan truly draws the 26th toughest schedule of pass defenses, this passing attack will look much more effective than what we’ve seen to date.
The 49ers face by far the easiest schedule of opponents based on win totals. They get the AFC South coupled with the Falcons, Bengals, Eagles, and Lions. In case you don’t see what that means, they play teams that finished 2020 with the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh worst records and received those draft picks for the 2021 draft.
But what is already going against them is injuries. There have been multiple so far, which is ridiculous considering the 49ers injury luck of late. They have been the:
Most injured team in 2020
Sixth most injured team in 2019
Fourth most injured team in 2018
10th most injured team in 2017
Shanahan’s years in San Francisco have not been met with healthy teams by the end of the year.
If the 49ers can find a way to stay healthy, I’m confident his offensive system will look great once again, particularly against these pass defenses. I can’t wait to see how he incorporates Lance into this offense. And I’ll be pulling for Shanahan to rebound, to find success and to keep things moving in San Francisco because the NFL is more fun when he’s calling offensive plays in the playoffs.
Stay tuned over the next eight weeks as we preview all 32 teams with daily articles and videos right here at the preview hub. For complete team chapters featuring dozens of visualizations and 462 pages, pick up a copy of Warren Sharp’s new ‘2021 Football Preview’ book.
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