Originally posted by Niners816:
Originally posted by jonnydel:
One thing I noticed in watching his film is we'll see the return of some stuff HaRoman did that people had fits about; flexing RB's out wide as receivers. I saw him split both RB's and his FB out wide to isolate Julio on inside defenders in a zone coverage. As most zone coverage is, "man in zone" coverage it gives your best playmakers a huge advantage working against a slower less agile defender inside that zone. It also gives easy reads for the QB. If you have a LB or S out on tat RB/FB then you know it's going to be man-coverage vs zone coverage if it's a CB.
The disadvantage, obviously, is in the run game. Where you take a potential runner or blocker out of the running game, you lose the ability for more explosive running plays or to keep the pass rushers honest.
I also noticed he seems to have an awareness of his own tendencies and how the defense will be prepared for them. In the game against SEA, he ran variations of concepts first, then went to the concepts themselves 2nd. An example of this would be the big catch and run Taylor Gabriel had on a slant route early in the game.
What it was was a variation of a "spacing" concept. If you look at the play and where the slant broke, it was a spacing concept, except instead of Gabriel running a hitch route, he ran a slant. Because they set up the spacing concept the defense was out of position to defend the slant and it was a catch and run of 50 yards or so. The interesting thing was that he didn't show a spacing before that point in the game. It was like he knew the defense would be ready for it. Later in the game, he ran a spacing concept from the exact same formation and personnel and Gabriel ran the classic hitch in that spacing combo.
Oh you mean great usage of personnel and formations to unravel coverage and get good matchups.
That knock on that particular offense never made sense to me. That in and of itself was about as Walsh/WCO as it gets.
I'm so stoked that we are actually gonna see variety in formations again and not the same 4-5 forms trotted out the entire game.
I never understood the gripe either. It was always, "he's no real threat out there, it's so stupid!". Yeah, but if you reveal coverage, he's still got to be guarded and you've won before the snap. You're right, too, it's very VERY Bill Walshian to do that.
I'm SOOOOOO stoked to see more than a few formations and a handful of plays per formation. Chip's offense drove me insane about that. His tempo worked when teams didn't know how many plays he had. But, after 3 years, they saw how many plays and concepts he ran and he just didn't have enough diversity to truly keep defenses guessing. More undisciplined or less acute defenses were taken advantage of, but any solid defense knew what he was doing and saw it coming. It was why I believe his numbers, even this year with how bad we were ranked, were still inflated a bit. He puts up big numbers against bad defenses or even mediocre defenses, but can't do squat against a good coordinator(I.E. Fangio). Chip really lost me the first game against Arizona when BG threw a pick because it was the same friggin pass play off the only time the formation was used 3 times in the game.
One thing I really like about Shanahan's offense is that he uses a lot of different personnel packages but not in a "one-trick-pony" way. It was like with Chip and Chryst that we would trot out certain personnel packages to run one or two concepts or certain running plays and that was about it. It made our personnel groups too predictable. With Shanny, i'm seeing multiple running and passing plays from each personnel grouping and many personnel groupings.
I will say this about his run game too - it's very "bubble" oriented. He tends to locate and attack the "bubble" on the line. That largest gap in the line. Most of the time against a 4-3 it's between the 1 and 3 tech's. But, if you watch the SEA game, 75% or so of the runs are at the bubble. In the first 3 quarters, it was about 95%. While predictable, constantly attacking that bubble - as his dad always used to do in the run game as well, forces those lineman to think horizontal first as they're going to have to slant and shift to cover that area. It includes the DE's as well because with that stretch play, they have to be disciplined for the cutback. It's one of the reason, IMO, Ryan only got sacked once against SEA, which has one of the best pass rushes in the league.
What was interesting, was that when it got down to the end of the game, when they needed to run the ball to control the clock, he shifted away from the bubble. It blew me away. It was when they started to seem like they were cracking through the SEA D in the run game. Because he set them up the whole game for a predictable run call and then did the opposite almost the entire 4th quarter and SEA wasn't ready. They were overpursuing and slanting their line towards the bubble and it opened up some lanes to run through.
It showed me he's a lot more than just a fancy shmancy passing game. He really understands how to put the whole offense together to complement itself and set things up throughout the game. That was something his dad was so incredible at. He could dictate certain things to happen at certain times for explosive plays or chunk yardage and seemed unstoppable, at times.
I remember Brent Jones talking about it during the 94 run. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, "It was amazing. Shanahan would tell us in meetings about how we would do things and at certain points in the game how it would open something up and we'd get this big chunk play. It sounded crazy because he'd predict it almost to the moment in the game, but the crazy thing was he'd be right and it'd work".
That knock on that particular offense never made sense to me. That in and of itself was about as Walsh/WCO as it gets. 
