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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/hallach_halil on 2024-02-07 13:56:03.
Four years after Patrick Mahomes pedaled backwards and hit Tyreek Hill on “2-3 Jet Chip Wasp” to convert a third-and-15 and start their comeback over the 49ers, these two sides are set to face off again on the biggest stage. This time around, Kansas City is looking to cement itself as a dynasty, with their third championship in five years, while San Francisco is going for their sixth title in franchise history, but the first one in 29 years, after knocking on the door with four NFC championship game appearances in those last five seasons.
The Niners looked dominant throughout the regular season en route to the NFC’s number one seed, before having to battle until the end against the Packers and Lions, coming back from a 17-point deficit in that conference title game. Meanwhile, it wasn’t nearly as smooth a ride for the Chiefs, trying to defend their championship, finishing with an 11-6 record and having to go on the road in the playoffs for the first two teams in the Mahomes era.
Based on the current active rosters, the 49ers are slated to return nine players and the Chiefs seven who were also part of those Super Bowl 54 teams. Both Kyle Shanahan and Andy Reid return as head coaches, while Steve Spagnuolo on defense and Dave Toub on special teams for the Chiefs are the only two of six total coordinators still around. They also have the benefit of a quarterback starting his fourth Super Bowl in five years, but the Niners have their best signal-caller under Shanahan in the Bay Area.
I want to look at both sides of the ball, break down in detail how the offensive and defensive units function respectively, along with how I believe they’ll match up, before presenting a couple of X-factors for each group and ultimately give you my prediction for the final score.
Let’s dive in:
49ers offense vs. Chiefs defense:
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Going through the history of head coach Kyle Shanahan in San Francisco, they’ve been a very efficient offense every year without a difference-maker at quarterback, considering their track records once they moved on. However, with a full season of Brock Purdy running the show, they’ve taken things to the next level. Looking at the regular season numbers, the 49ers easily the number one offense in expected points added per play (0.179) and success rate (51.6%), with the top marks on both dropbacks and run plays, along with being tops in Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (31.8%). In fact, the difference between them and number two in DVOA is the same as the gap between second and eighth. Their passing EPA is down a little bit – in large part due to Purdy struggling in the rain until the final drive of the Divisional Round game against the Packers – but they’ve actually been even more effective on the ground by quite a margin (0.1 EPA better). They also led the league with 75 explosive passes (20+ yards) and overall in terms of yards per play (6.6 YPP). Once again, due to the weather conditions versus Green Bay and Deebo Samuel getting banged up early on, that number was a little bit down, but they still logged four such explosives in that contest and then eight more in the NFC title against Detroit.
Run game:
The “Shanahan offense” and in particular its run are terms that are often vaguely thrown around. The base run concept of wide zone that Kyle father’s Mike Shanahan popularized towards the end of the millennium has become a core component of many offensive systems across the NFL, but as you follow its trails and look at how Kyle himself has continued to evolve during his tenure in San Francisco, you realize that it would be a disservice to categorize what they do in such a simplistic manner. While they haven’t swung so far towards a more vertical orientation, such as one of his disciples Sean McVay with the Rams, where now their primary run concept is duo, they’ve certainly become more diverse in their approach. They still major in the inside and outside zone, but while they started to only enhance that horizontal stretch of the defense by tossing the ball to the back a couple of years ago, now it’s more about having additional blockers on the move at the snap already along with different sift elements to kick out the backside man at the end of the line of scrimmage, such as with a tight-end or fullback. So while the idea remains to make their opponents flow play-side, in part because they have a running back more suited to make quick decisions and translate information to his feet, they end up hitting inside a lot more than they would’ve in prior iterations. Along with that, pulling the backside guard plus a TE/FB on power and counter plays is a lot more frequent.
Where Shanahan is truly special though, is the way he can identify how you’ll defend certain looks and dress up the same plays differently. More than any other team in the league, the Niners use shifts and motion at the snap to create numbers advantages against static defenses. Yet, if opponents do react to it and try to overload that way, they’ll happily hit weak-side (inside zone) runs. Additionally, when they do want to get the ball out to the perimeter, they love to run toss out of more condensed sets along with flipping the ball to receivers on end-arounds/reverses, frequently off counter action, where they pull what ends up the play-side guard the opposite way, as a false key presented to linebackers. In particular, they love to use Kittle as a kick-out element basically to their toss plays, while having receivers in condensed splits pin down edge-defenders, in order to get their tackles out to the perimeter as well. Separate from the scheme itself, Christian McCaffrey has turned himself into an elite decision-maker and operator in condensed space, where he truly understands how body language can affect second-level defenders, how to press creases, get guys moving to one side of blocks and cutting the opposite way at the last moment. For the regular season, he finished second in average rushing yards over expected (1.32) to only Miami’s Devon Achane, who just set a new NFL record in yards per attempt on a much smaller sample size. And he did so rushing against the highest rate of 8+ defenders in the box (36%) among RBs with 90+ carries, according to Next Gen Stats. I wouldn’t say San Francisco has maulers on the O-line outside of left tackle Trent Williams and the one blemish you can put on them is that they’ll happily keep running into unfavorable looks, particularly on early downs.
Pass game:
So, fundamentally you’d think an offense so expertly constructed in the run game would heavily rely on moving the launch point of the quarterback with bootlegs and building plays off punish the flow of the defense with misdirection throws. And don’t get me wrong – they still have plenty of that on the menu. However, they have gone from the most play-action-heavy offense over the last couple of years to being in the middle of the pack this season. Part of that is modern NFL defenses adjusting to the influence Shanahan’s coaching tree and its offsprings have had on the landscape of football, but also having a quarterback, who is more comfortable and a cleaner, quicker decision-maker from the pocket. There are a lot more new-school West Coast elements I would call it, where the route distributions are very similar to what you may find in even the old Bill Walsh playbooks from the late 80s and early 90s, but they do it with a lot more movement before and at the snap, where Shanahan understands extremely well how to create issues for how match-coverages operate. Where Kyle separates himself from the rest of the league though is his ability to isolate defenders and if there’s a weakness across that unit, keep picking on it relentlessly. We saw that came to full effect in their week 13 win at Philadelphia, when they put those linebackers in hell for four quarters by the way their heads were spinning. I actually put together an extensive All-22 analysis on the way San Francisco threw all kinds of misdirection at them, putting those guys in a bind with high-lows and changing up who they were responsible for matching multiple times.
One of the big differences for San Francisco’s more traditional dropback game is how insanely good Brandon Aiyuk has become – in particular as that isolated X receiver on the backside of the formation. He finished the regular season third among all pass-catchers in yards per route run (3.01) and has absolutely feasted when left one-on-one. We’ve seen Shanahan play around with that a lot, where they’d work that backside matchup when calling four-strong concepts the other way, before taking advantage of the space it creates as defenses adjust and now another pass-catcher would have a lot of room to run on a crosser towards where the receiver was originally lined up, as that guy ends up being bracketed. An element to watch that they’ve incorporated is a swing route with a designated lead-blocker, almost like an option to throw a screen pass within a typical pur…
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