Kyle Shanahan’s Offense Is All About Torturing Himself and His Assistants

If you think stopping the 49ers’ system is difficult, try being on his staff and getting him to like one of your pass plays.

Under Kyle Shanahan, the San Francisco 49ers have come to define the modern era of offensive football. Since 2019, the 49ers have had a top-three offense in net passing yards per attempt each year save for an injury-marred ’20. In both ’22 and ’23, the 49ers were a top-10 offense in almost every conceivable statistical category, even ones that may seem incongruent with one another (such as scoring quickly on big, explosive plays and also sustaining long, punishing drives). Defensive coordinators caught underneath the 49ers’ offense often flail like a swimmer in a whirlpool.

Opposing teams have searched for the essence of the 49ers’ success, hiring Shanahan’s assistants, poaching his players and stealing his plays. But, the secret ingredient remains sitting in plain sight. Ask any of Shanahan’s assistants and they’ll tell you: Kyle is no different than a barista using only Luwak coffee beans, or a watchmaker insistent on ivory hands. He must know everything about the ingredients before they are poured into the pot and they have to be perfect.

This leads to the inevitable showdown that, when asking members of his staff about it, causes one to be met with darting eyes, or a downward gaze accompanied by a knowing chuckle.

If you think stopping San Francisco’s offense is difficult, try being on Shanahan’s staff :: Sergio Estrada/USA TODAY Sports

Basically: If you think stopping San Francisco’s offense is difficult, try being on Shanahan’s staff and getting him to like one of your pass plays.

“You have to be as prepared as he is,” says run game coordinator and offensive line coach Chris Foerster. “Like the game is tomorrow. Like it’s that play of the game. You better know exactly the s--- you’re talking about. You gotta watch every single snap of every single play, you have to have seen other people who have done it, you need filmed examples, every example known to man.

“What have you been doing for the last three days? Two days? Twenty-four hours? Your job [hypothetically] is to have the list of third-down plays ready, as you would call it if the Super Bowl was on the line. Every single week. It better be vetted. Thoroughly investigate everything.”

Let’s pause for one moment and note that many of Shanahan’s closest aides insist this is not a bad character trait. Both Anthony Lynn and Brian Griese, two of the more seasoned offensive coaches on Shanahan’s staff who are his elders, say that Shanahan’s methods have made them better.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being demanding,” Lynn says. “It’s hard for a guy who has been in the league for 32 years to go somewhere and feel like they’re getting better, and I feel like I’m getting better.”

Shanahan said it's a kind of self-projection. He contorts himself mentally and expects others to do the same.

“That’s just how I am,” Shanahan says. “There are so many things that go into a play, and I’m kind of OCD about it. It can be exhausting in a week to decide on some things based on all the [contingencies] you have to check. But anyone who tells you that story are probably guys who came at something too fast, and once you start asking them questions two, three, four and they haven’t thought about that stuff, I have no patience…because I torture myself. I torture these guys, too.”

That doesn’t mean it’s not a memorable experience when it happens to a young coach for the first time. Being ripped by Shanahan after suggesting a play is a kind of badge, a rite of passage for anyone who wants to bring up an idea without knowing every conceivable answer.

Often, coaches say, it is just you and Kyle in a room. Often, coaches say, they are very excited about something they’ve gleaned from hours of film study.

And then…

“I was…not prepared,” says Klint Kubiak, the team’s offensive pass game specialist and soon-to-be offensive coordinator of the New Orleans Saints. “My brother is on staff, so I kind of got a heads up on what he’s looking for. But until you get in that room on a Monday night, or a Tuesday night, you’re not really ready. It’s intense, but it’s positive.”

A sampling of lobbed questions include:

• How can this succeed against all fronts?

• How can this succeed against all coverages?

• How can this succeed in all of our own formations?

• What are our contingency plans if we don’t get the looks we like?

• Are our players good enough to run this play?

• If the primary option is not there, how successful is our secondary option?

• What is our percentage chance of hitting it?

“If there’s any hesitation, you have to start over,” tight ends coach Brian Fleury says. “It’s challenging.”

The particular issue comes when Shanahan reaches into the depths of his rapid recall. Kubiak said that Shanahan “watches film fast, and it soaks into his brain better than anyone I’ve ever been around.” That can yield moments of true obscurity in these rapid-fire sessions. Shanahan is known to have brought up a singular pressure that a defensive coordinator ran once a season ago, wanting to know how the suggestion will meet those particular requirements.

For the nonfootball obsessive, this is the coaching equivalent to a fan of the band Neutral Milk Hotel saying to you: “Oh, you also like the band? List the names of lead singer Jeff Mangum’s cats in alphabetical order.”

“It’s easy to come up with ideas or concepts for the No. 1 coverage a defense runs. They don’t always run those coverages,” Griese says. “So what happens if you get the second, third, fourth, fifth coverage? What are you going to tell the quarterback to do? He’s gotta go out and make those decisions in the blink of an eye and if you haven’t thought through all the contingencies, then you’re not giving him the best chance of success.”

The origin of this attitude seems to lie with some of Shanahan’s earliest mentors. Griese said that both Jon Gruden, who employed Kyle as an offensive quality control coach in Tampa Bay, and Kyle’s father, Mike, would approach suggestions similarly. Kyle, who possesses a kind of trademark terseness that is part condescending tech person and part tortured mathematics professor nearing a breakthrough, may just be a departure from Gruden’s theatrics or Mike’s bluntness.

Either way, the 49ers believe it has helped them here. Being argumentative, being challenging, has led the coaching staff to a point of total, vulnerable honesty. Lynn told me that if he talked to Shanahan like he talked to other coaches in the past, he may not have “survived.” He said it's not just the young coaches who get the verbal dressing down, by the way.

It is a less explored route to the only acceptable destination: perfection.

“It’s not an attack. It’s a challenge,” Lynn says. “I think that’s how you come up with the best ideas. You have to have, as they say, good-old healthy conflict.”