How Kyle Shanahan Can Grow This Offseason

Get with the times. It's a passing league.

Grant Cohn | Apr 5, 2024

Feb 4, 2024; Las Vegas, NV, USA; San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan watches from a team bus / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Kyle Shanahan is a very good offensive coach, but not a Championship head coach. He still needs to evolve. Here are the top-three places he can start.

1. Embrace the passing game.

Get with the times. It's a passing league. Take the fullback off the field and play Jauan Jennings instead. Kyle Juszczyk doesn't do much anymore. He rarely gets the ball or makes the block that springs the big play. At this point in his career, he's window dressing. As opposed to Jennings, who would have been the Super Bowl MVP if the 49ers had won. Jennings is a devastating blocker and a good route runner who's big and makes contested catches. Use him more. Don't rank dead last in pass attempts again like last season.

2. Upgrade the right side of the offensive line.

It's been subpar since Shanahan has been the head coach, and he doesn't seem to mind, because he can simply call runs that go to the left behind Trent Williams. But the 49ers never will have a top-tier passing game with half an offensive line. If the 49ers want to throw the ball more than 30 times per game, they need a quality right tackle and a quality right guard, instead of what they have.

3. Trust your quarterback.

Let Brock Purdy call audibles and set the protections at the line of scrimmage. Empower him. Make him more than just a joystick for the coach. If the 49ers are going to embrace the passing game, they have to embrace Purdy and make him the center of the team.

Published Apr 5, 2024

GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.