WSJ: The 49ers Defy Modern Football.
by EricCartman (2024-02-23 12:54:06)
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This article ran a few weeks ago. I'm just getting around to posting it.

The basic premise is that Kyle Shanahan, and other coaches that worked under his father, are utilizing narrower formations, which is a opposite of the spread offense that has dominated football for years.

If you can access the link, there is a cool picture that shows the average width of NFL playoffs teams. San Fran is the tightest, with an average width of 19.9 yards, and Buffalo is the widest at 26.9 yards. )The article says that "the width of the average formation has shrunk dramatically, from 28.3 yards to 24.6").

Of note, KC was in the middle of the pack at 24.6 yards wide.

But what makes the way the 49ers attack the entire field so menacing is something as simple as it is counterintuitive. When they snap the ball in the Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs, they’ll be bunched up closer together than any other team in the league.

For the last quarter-century, the trend in football has been to do the complete opposite. Spread offenses have trickled their way upward, from high school fields in Texas through the college game and into the NFL. The name explains the concept: receivers split out farther from the quarterback and even the offensive linemen space themselves out more, spreading the field and stretching the defense before the center even hikes the ball.

But ever since Kyle Shanahan became San Francisco’s coach in 2017, his team has been at the forefront of football’s latest schematic evolution. The spread is out. The squeeze is in.

Shanahan’s condensed formations, which are beginning to proliferate through the NFL, take the same principles as the spread—and completely invert them. The goal of any offense is to create and exploit space. Spread schemes do that by forcing defenders to line up from sideline to sideline. The 49ers achieve the same goal in an unexpected way: by forcing defensive backs to worry about the enormous empty patches of turf on the outside, it actually opens up the middle of the field to attack.

That surprising insight has made San Francisco’s offense the envy of the rest of the league. It’s why McCaffrey always seems to have cavernous holes to run through, and Purdy regularly has receivers who are yards away from the closest defender. It’s the reason the league is now littered with Shanahan’s acolytes—and why NFL offenses are shrinking.



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