Looking for detailed insights about the San Francisco 49ers players, coaches, and philosophies?
This excerpt from Warren Sharp’s ‘2021 Football Preview’ book gets you prepared for the NFL season by delivering the smartest information & analysis in the fastest, most direct way possible.
I love Kyle Shanahan as a coach. I think he’s one of the best offensive minds in our game.
But winning games isn’t easy. Although there are issues every team deals with and things that go wrong that are outside the coach’s control, here’s why this season is so important for Shanahan:
The 49ers are 29-35 (45%) since hiring Shanahan in 2017, winning six games or less in three of four years.
I was heavily betting the 49ers before the 2019 season, having looked deeply at their 2018 season and saw things I liked. But after last season’s results, this 2021 season is vital for him.
Here’s the other thin line with coaching. Just at the 49ers:
Kyle Shanahan is 24-9 (73%) with Jimmy Garoppolo (18-14-1, 56% ATS), averaging 28.2 ppg.
Kyle Shanahan is 7-27 (21%) without Jimmy Garoppolo (14-20, 41% ATS), averaging 20.0 ppg.
Now look back at the other quarterbacks he’s worked with and the results Shanahan has been able to deliver as a coach:
2-10 (17%) – CJ Beathard
7-12 (37%) – Brian Hoyer
5-11 (31% – Nick Mullens
19-13 (59%) – Matt Ryan
0-2 (0%) – Johnny Manziel
0-1 (0%) – Connor Shaw
12-16 (43%) – Robert Griffin III
6-10 (37%) – Rex Grossman
5-8 (38%) – Donovan McNabb
1-3 (25%) – Kirk Cousins
0-3 (0%) – John Beck
15-12 (56%) – Matt Schaub
2-3 (40%) – Sage Rosenfels
There are several takeaways from these numbers. For starters, he’s worked with three true, solid pro quarterbacks (Matt Ryan, Kirk Cousins, and Garoppolo) and a whole lot of has-beens or never-weres. In the absence of one of those quarterbacks, however, don’t expect much from his offenses — at least, not from a win-loss perspective.
But if we want to zoom out to what he’s truly in charge of (the offense), here are the rankings of his offenses in what is most correlates with wins or losses, and that is points scored:
2020 – SFO: 21
2019 – SFO: 2
2018 – SFO: 21
2017 – SFO: 20
2016 – ATL: 1
2015 – ATL: 21
2014 – CLE: 27
2013 – WAS: 23
2012 – WAS: 4
2011 – WAS: 26
2010 – WAS: 25
2009 – HOU: 10
2008 – HOU: 17
In just two of the last eight years, he’s had an offense rank better than 20th in points scored. And when he has, they absolutely kick ass. Both years, they’ve made the Super Bowl. But when they haven’t, they rank below average in point production and they don’t even produce a winning record.
Esoterically this is ideal, as you’re ensuring better draft capital to build for a magical run. But most owners don’t think along those lines. They become impatient if a team isn’t winning for years in a row.
So 2021 is important for the 49ers. And it’s even more important for Shanahan.
Linemakers are expecting it to be a big year for San Francisco with a win total of 10.5 this year. That’s a huge improvement over their six-win total in 2020. It’s the second-largest improvement in wins for any team (Jaguars are projected to improve by 5.5 wins from 1 win to 6.5).
Looking back since 2010, we can run some numbers to show the historical context this puts the 49ers in.
The teams that are projected to have the top-5 improvement in wins do end up winning more games: they win 3.3 more games on average. But they win only 0.3 wins over projection and have exceeded their win total in 34 of 64 cases.
There have been 23 other teams projected to win at least 3.5 more games than they did last year. These teams win 0.7 more games than projected, but only 12 of 23 actually exceed their win total. But none of these teams were projected to win double-digit games.
In fact, over the last decade, there has been only one team that was projected to go from a losing record to winning double-digit games, the 2018 Packers. They won only six games in 2018 after winning seven in 2017, but they lost Aaron Rodgers due to injury.
If we relax the criteria and question how many teams had losing seasons and then were projected to have winning seasons the next year, there were 17 such teams. 10 of the 17 exceeded their win total. On average, these teams went from 6.1 wins to 9.4 wins, but those that did exceed their win total all won 11 or more games. That’s what the 49ers would need to do this year to exceed their win total.
The bottom line is, betting against such turnarounds has not been fruitful, but it’s exceedingly rare for a team to be projected by the linemakers to go from six wins to winning double-digit games. Yes, there is an extra game to play with this year, but it really shows how strong the perceived rebound is for the 49ers. They are favored in 14 games this year, by an average spread of nearly four points per game. The only games they aren’t favored in are road games within their division.
So if Shanahan badly needs a bounce-back season, he may very well get one.
What do we expect for the 49ers this season? Should we be as bullish as linemakers? More bullish? When Shanahan was asked if this year’s team can be as good or better than the 2019 team that made the Super Bowl, he responded:
“I think our roster gives us a chance to be. But also with that year, it wasn’t that our roster was the best in the league, I thought it had the chance to be the best in the league and then we played like it. … We weren’t in a ton of close games because we were able to wear people down and kind of take them over by running the ball and then by our pass rush getting after them. … We never got beat very bad. … We had a chance to win all the games we lost, too. Just on tape and people studying us, I think what coaches would say is we were the best team. I felt like that showed up in the Super Bowl until there was about six minutes left. And (the Chiefs) had a couple of key third downs that I thought would’ve ended the game. And once they did get those key third downs, we missed a couple of key third downs. Once that happened and you do that against a team like Kansas City … it flipped fast. So you’ve gotta be the best all the way to the end. And we came up just a little bit short.”
What the 49ers have going for them in 2021 is the schedule. No team faces an easier drop in schedule difficulty of defenses than the 49ers. They shift from the third toughest schedule to the 19th toughest schedule. Their pass defense schedule shifts from fifth toughest to 26th toughest. This will help Garoppolo, Trey Lance, or whichever other Shanahan quarterback lines up under center.ce
The pass defenses Shanahan’s quarterbacks have gone up against during his tenure:
Fifth most difficult in 2020
10th most difficult in 2019
12th most difficult in 2018
Most difficult in 2017
If Shanahan truly draws the 26th toughest schedule of pass defenses, this passing attack will look much more effective than what we’ve seen to date.
The 49ers face by far the easiest schedule of opponents based on win totals. They get the AFC South coupled with the Falcons, Bengals, Eagles, and Lions. In case you don’t see what that means, they play teams that finished 2020 with the first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh-worst records and received those draft picks for the 2021 draft.
But what is already going against them is injuries. There have been multiple so far, which is ridiculous considering the 49ers' injury luck of late. They have been the:
Most injured team in 2020
Sixth most injured team in 2019
Fourth most injured team in 2018
10th most injured team in 2017
Shanahan’s years in San Francisco have not been met with healthy teams by the end of the year.
If the 49ers can find a way to stay healthy, I’m confident his offensive system will look great once again, particularly against these pass defenses. I can’t wait to see how he incorporates Lance into this offense. And I’ll be pulling for Shanahan to rebound, to find success, and to keep things moving in San Francisco because the NFL is more fun when he’s calling offensive plays in the playoffs.
For the complete San Francisco 49ers chapter, including a dozen more visuals & info-graphics, defensive breakdown, and detailed Fantasy football implication — plus the other 31 team chapters — pick up a copy of Warren Sharp’s new ‘2021 Football Preview’ book