Coming into Week 13’s marquee game between the Miami Dolphins and the San Francisco 49ers, only the Kansas City Chiefs (276) had more passing attempts with pre-snap motion than the Dolphins’ 274, so 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan, who served as Dolphins’ head coach Mike McDaniel’s mentor once upon a time, had to expect pre-snap trickery from his former protégé. McDaniel worked with Shanahan in Houston, Washington, Cleveland, Atlanta, and San Francisco, so the familiarity is evident.
How it came about on the first play of the game was both expected and original. Some people at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, CA were probably still finding their seats when Tua Tagovailoa burned San Francisco’s top-rated defense with a 75-yard touchdown pass to receiver Trent Sherfield — who spent the 2021 season with the 49ers.
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With two players in the backfield along with Tagovailoa running a scissors (crossing) concept, and Tyreek Hill running motion, the usually foundationally-excellent San Francisco defense was left betwixt and between. You can see linebackers Fred Warner and Azeez Al-Shaair cheating up to the backfield action, and Hill clearing things out to the boundary, leaving Sherfield with an open route. Cheating up left Warner a tick late to get back to Sherfield, and from there, it was off to the races.
“Yeah, I mean it is,” Ryans said this week, when asked whether the Dolphins are running Shanahan’s overall offense. “It’s our offensive scheme and McDaniel does a really good job of mixing things up. Not too many plays are the same. He finds a way to get different players in different positions, a lot of different looks, a lot of different motions to get defenses confused and looking at all these things that are going on, so he does a good job of creating space. By moving guys around, making guys have to communicate and he hits you with any type of play, whether it’s run game, pass game, he makes the play action marry up with the run game, which makes it even more difficult, so just shout out to McDaniel. He’s doing a really good job there.”
Now, Ryans knows that in a different way than he did before.
