There are a lot of little, nagging questions ahead of the 49ers’ season opener on Sunday in Chicago.
How will the 49ers do without starting strong safety Jimmie Ward? Who will be starting at running back? Who will be the starting left guard on the offensive line?
But there’s one question that trumps them all.
The 49ers might have brought Jimmy Garoppolo back for another season, but the Niners will not be running the Garoppolo offense in 2022.
No, with first-year starter Trey Lance at the helm of the attack, 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan’s offense will to have to change to fit the new QB1.
So the big question is quite simple: How different will the Niners look when they have the ball this season?
Shanahan doesn’t want you to know this, but this team will run the ball a lot this season.
Ok, that’s no secret. Shanahan’s teams are always run-first.
But the way that they’ll be running the ball is something the team wants to keep under wraps ahead of Week 1.
Ten years ago, Shanahan was the offensive coordinator for his dad, Mike Shanahan, in Washington, and he had dual-threat Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III at quarterback. In a brilliant move of pragmatism, Shanahan used zone-read run plays — popular in college but a novelty in the NFL — to help turn Griffin into the AP Rookie of the Year with over 4,000 yards of total offense.
The zone-read run game is no longer exotic at the NFL level. Cam Newton and Lamar Jackson have used it to win MVP, while Chip Kelly used it with less success in his one year as Niners head coach. But it’s not something every quarterback can do well. And it’s not a concept that every coach can effectively integrate into their playbooks. We know Shanahan can call a zone-read offense — he even ran the play with Garoppolo once or twice. Lance is one of the quarterbacks who can do it dozens of times a game.
And the option game has expanded — a lot — since 2012. So what has Shanahan cooked up for Lance in his first year as a starter?
We’ve seen flashes of the Niners’ new zone-read game at preseason practices. Shanahan has called some vanilla stuff in 11-on-11s, but the more interesting and intricate stuff is happening to the side, away from media eyes.
I’m curious to see if the Niners embrace the contemporary spin on the zone-read and become a run-pass option team this season. An RPO is a zone-read where the quarterback can hand the ball off or keep it to either run or — here’s the wrinkle — fire a quick pass to a receiver.
And what about the triple-option? The spread, shotgun formations of the college game have mixed with the classic wishbone and T-formation option sets of the past and created a fascinating hybrid — the read-option offense.
Has Shanahan been watching Tulane’s Willie Fritz’s motion-heavy, read-option attack, where wide receivers, running behind the offensive line before the snap, are integrated into the run game? Some shovel passes to Deebo Samuel, running in front of that critical mesh point between Lance and his running back, could pick up huge gains.
There are so many possibilities for the Niners’ offense now that they have a quarterback who can run and throw the ball deep. And Shanahan had an entire offseason to develop a playbook specialized for Lance.
We saw a smidge of that passing game show up in the preseason.
We’re yet to see the full run game.
And while Shanahan might not show the rest of the NFL everything right away, he does have a young quarterback who likes to run and an offensive line that can only be trusted to block the run — he can’t hide all the good stuff for later.
We’re going to have a good idea of just how different the 49ers offense will be under Lance in 2022 in Week 1. It’s a mystery I can’t wait to have solved.
