All 49ers

Kyle Shanahan Explains Why the 49ers have Decreased Play Action Passes

Grant Cohn

Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan stands on the sideline during the second quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
Oct 6, 2024; Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan stands on the sideline during the second quarter against the Arizona Cardinals at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images / Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images
In this story:

SANTA CLARA -- Brock Purdy is an elite play-action passer. Unfortunately for the 49ers, Kyle Shanahan hasn't called many play-action passes this season.

Through six games, Purdy's play-action passer rating is an outstanding 120 while his drop-back passer rating is a solid but unspectacular 96.7. Given the discrepancy, you'd think Shanahan would call a ton of play fakes. But so far, purdy has attempted just 30 play-action passes and a whopping 155 drop-back passes according to Pro Football Reference.

What is Shanahan thinking?

“We just try to run what we think looks good on tape," Shanahan said. "It kind of just depends on how people are playing us and sometimes we think it looks really good, sometimes we think it's not so good. So it's not like we don't just do things every week because we do it. I think it's just been just a matter of how the schedule's played out.”

TRANSLATION: Shanahan feels confident calling play-action passes only against certain defensive looks and won't call them against others. Which means the other team can dictate how many play-action passes Shanahan will call.

If a team rushes four defensive linemen and drops seven defenders into zone coverage, Shanahan will call play action all day. But if a team disguises its coverages and puts six defenders on the line of scrimmage before the snap and threatens to blitz, Shanahan won't call play action much at all. He doesn't want his quarterback to turn his back to the defense while it blitzes or rotates coverages.

Sounds like defensive coordinators have Shanahan's number.

Download and follow The Best 49ers Podcast.

Published
Grant Cohn
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.

Home/News