49ers Defy Modern Football -- 49ers have reached the Super Bowl thanks to a strategic twist that's changing the NFL

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SHGopher

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"....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...."
 

Off topic. Unless you are talking about PJ and the Gopher offensive philosophy, which is not mentioned anywhere.
 
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highwayman said:
Off topic.
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You don't hang around here much do you. ;)

A huge topic of discussion here -- and in the critical press -- is PJ Fleck's old school conservative offenses. At the other end are those saying to open things up because everyone, everyone has gone spread, just look at the NFL.

Well not so fast...

But since the Gophers offense is of no interest to you, move along, nothing to see here.

It's Super Bowl week too. It's relevant.
 

SHGopher said:
You don't hang around here much do you. ;)

A huge topic of discussion here -- and in the critical press -- is PJ Fleck's old school conservative offenses. At the other end are those saying to open things up because everyone, everyone has gone spread, just look at the NFL.

Well not so fast...

But since the Gophers offense is of no interest to you, move along, nothing to see here.

It's Super Bowl week too. It's relevant.
Click to expand...
Understand posting this but not sure of the relevance to PJ. I may be wrong (I often am), but I don’t think PJ's offense has been moving towards narrower splits in the o-line. They often use 3 widespread as well as 3 tight ends, so some of each. My read on the article is tighter spacing up front, which I haven't heard about the Gophers using.
 

I'm willing to hear from someone more educated than me, but I'm not seeing a ton of similarities between our offense and what SF runs. I'm not one who frequently bashes PJ or any of our coaches for the offense we run, but this article doesn't really seem relevant to our football program.
 


Yes, good points. I am inferring a broader discussion.

Michigan just won more run oriented against a wide open deep strike team.

www.kxan.com

49ers coach gets another shot at elusive Super Bowl title

Kyle Shanahan’s offense is mimicked throughout the NFL as his innovative schemes are utilized by teams throughout the league.
www.kxan.com www.kxan.com

"While Shanahan’s offense is as modern as it comes, his approach as a coach is decidedly old school... His play-calling revolves around the running game, even if he has opened things up a bit more since Brock Purdy took over at quarterback last season."

It's a copycat league.

And doing old things with new twists. And old twists for new things.
 

There’s next to nothing similar to our offenses other than that we both have 11 players on the field
 

SHGopher said:
Yes, good points. I am inferring a broader discussion.

Michigan just won more run oriented against a wide open deep strike team.

www.kxan.com

49ers coach gets another shot at elusive Super Bowl title

Kyle Shanahan’s offense is mimicked throughout the NFL as his innovative schemes are utilized by teams throughout the league.
www.kxan.com www.kxan.com

"While Shanahan’s offense is as modern as it comes, his approach as a coach is decidedly old school... His play-calling revolves around the running game, even if he has opened things up a bit more since Brock Purdy took over at quarterback last season."

It's a copycat league.

And doing old things with new twists. And old twists for new things.
Click to expand...
He ran the ball 48% of the time. We ran it 60%. You can run the ball and win. Shanahan does it incredibly creatively and with varying formations with an entirely different pass attack to complement it
 

...and if a couch stubbornly is old-school run-first but you really want to add innovation to that... well who is doing that well...

First you have to have a QB who can do that. AK was not the guy. We don't know what the Gophers offense would lpok like if they had someone who could run a more dynamic passing game. Gophers haven't had the QB to do it.

To me both the deep strike Air Coryell route tree and a vanilla I formation all the time are outdated. They key is to innovate and keep defenses off balance by incorporating a blend. You need explosives now and then.

Right now the spread offense is the thing. What is next.
 



Look at the Lions, 49ers, Ravens, they all put extra OL on the field and want to pound the ball. The Gophers too put extra OL on the field at times and want to pound the ball. This is why I'm a bit surprised the PJ sticks to the RPO and doesn't become more creative in the run game.
 

I have no idea what next year's will look like and this is a bit of a reach, but there is a small similarity between the 49ers offense and our offense in 2019. The entire purpose of the bunch sets and our slant heavy RPO of 2019 was to put an immense amount of pressure on the LBers/Safeties.

There were similar concepts, we got rid of the ball quickly, made 1-2 quick reads and almost all of the passes were right in the middle of the field. If the defense brings a safety to the box, you run the ball. If they bring a LBer, you play off him, pass if he crashes, run if he drops.

This isn't super unique to the Gophers and I don't even know if you can say it's true anymore of the Gophers, but the run dominant/slant heavy passing attack is somewhat similar.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Look at the Lions, 49ers, Ravens, they all put extra OL on the field and want to pound the ball. The Gophers too put extra OL on the field at times and want to pound the ball. This is why I'm a bit surprised the PJ sticks to the RPO and doesn't become more creative in the run game.
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I often wonder how much more flexible NFL coaches can be or even top college teams as far as how many different looks a given team can "do well".
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Look at the Lions, 49ers, Ravens, they all put extra OL on the field and want to pound the ball. The Gophers too put extra OL on the field at times and want to pound the ball. This is why I'm a bit surprised the PJ sticks to the RPO and doesn't become more creative in the run game.
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I don't think we have run much RPO over the last couple of years.
 



It's always so easy to see great teams do a thing and decide "woah look at this revolutionary thing" and ... it's really just that they're really good players and thus can do things and ... sometimes if they did it any other way they'd be successful too.

Bunching up on the line just doesn't strike me as that big of a deal. Many teams do it on occasion... if it worked for them often you'd think they'd do it more.

I always think of the fade pass to the corner of the end zone, with a great QB and WR it is unstoppable, but for most everyone else that pass is a very low percentage play / really throwing away a play... but it looks great when teams that can do it, do.
 
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What makes the 49’ers so unique is that their OL do a great job of BOTH run blocking and then can also pass block. Takes outstanding line coaching a well as linemen. Not sure we qualify in either front.
 

The front 4 on the d is bull rushing everyone. This isnt rocket science.
 

SHGopher said:
...and if a couch stubbornly is old-school run-first but you really want to add innovation to that... well who is doing that well...

First you have to have a QB who can do that. AK was not the guy. We don't know what the Gophers offense would lpok like if they had someone who could run a more dynamic passing game. Gophers haven't had the QB to do it.

To me both the deep strike Air Coryell route tree and a vanilla I formation all the time are outdated. They key is to innovate and keep defenses off balance by incorporating a blend. You need explosives now and then.

Right now the spread offense is the thing. What is next.
Click to expand...
There's not one single offense that is "the spread". "The spread" is a concept that has about 1000 different variations.
 

The article behind the pay wall goes into detail. I could only quote the beginning as a teaser. It's more for a dialog about innovating, especially
Gophers1992 said:
There's not one single offense that is "the spread". "The spread" is a concept that has about 1000 different variations.
Click to expand...

I am not sure who you are yelling at into the dark night but it's nonsense. Nobody said the proliferation of the spread offense is a playback.

That article had a lot of detail behind a paywall I can't quote. I just gave the opening teaser.
 




Yes, to the overall OP, I think power offenses can take advantage of defenses that have adapted to more pass-happy offenses that are now the norm in college and the NFL. It's no different than early Urban Meyer or Mike Leach offenses from 20+ years ago taking advantage of defenses geared toward the run game. Here was my little comment from the MI/AL game few weeks ago:

2023-24 Other Bowl Games Thread

Michigan O-line splits are tiny. They must think they can blow Alabama off the ball.
gopherhole.com gopherhole.com

I have WSJ so I'll try to copy and past a free "gifted" version here. I hope it works.

https://www.wsj.com/sports/football...gcloieku63o&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
 

Gophers1992 said:
There's not one single offense that is "the spread". "The spread" is a concept that has about 1000 different variations.
Click to expand...
Yes, spread is talking about formation. You can run and pass out of spread. Just as a team can run and pass out of non spread formations. In the end you have to be able to run and pass no matter how you line up.
 



SHGopher said:
You don't hang around here much do you. ;)

A huge topic of discussion here -- and in the critical press -- is PJ Fleck's old school conservative offenses. At the other end are those saying to open things up because everyone, everyone has gone spread, just look at the NFL.

Well not so fast...

But since the Gophers offense is of no interest to you, move along, nothing to see here.

It's Super Bowl week too. It's relevant.
Click to expand...
I get it now. Maybe you should have introduced your post that way. It would have made more sense.
 

Out State Gopher said:
post-huddle
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Yep and if it's called post huddle and pre snap, it is still not an RPO. An RPO is decided during the play (hence why the lineman are downfield if you don't throw the ball quickly enough). It's true option.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
I don't think we have run much RPO over the last couple of years.
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We didn’t run nearly as much RPO as people thought we did during the 2017-2019 stretch either

Not all play actions are RPOs

But I agree we have run it a lot less
 

SHGopher said:


"....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...."
Click to expand...
It is pretty interesting to me that shanahan is getting credit for something that’s been happening in high school football for the last 5-8 years. A reversion to the tight stuff, a lot of wing T concepts. In 3 years when all the high school offenses are running the same stuff they’ve been running for 10 years people will say they’re copying shanahan.
 


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