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Kyle Shanahan Explains Why the 49ers Struggle to Beat Man Coverage

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
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SANTA CLARA -- Everyone knows how to stop the 49ers passing game these days.

Just cover man to man. Simple as that.

In the past, teams were scared to play man coverage against the 49ers because of Christian McCaffrey. No linebacker can match up with him one on one. So the 49ers saw a ton of zone coverages and generally shredded them.

Now McCaffrey is out and the 49ers are seeing a ton of man coverages, and they're struggling to move the ball. I asked Kyle Shanahan about this trend after the 49ers lost to the Chiefs.

Q: Seemed to struggle to beat man-to-man coverage in this game. Are there things you can do as a play call, play designer to help get people open against those particular looks?

SHANAHAN: “Yeah, that's all we try to do. Thought a couple guys did pretty good on man, thought we got a good curl pump there, Jacob Cowing at the end. I thought Brandon Aiyuk had a real good one that we just didn't go to, had one of the picks on it. Ronnie Bell did on the other pick. There were definitely times guys beat man and sometimes they didn't."

Shanahan's answer is extremely interesting. He's saying that he can scheme receivers open against man to man coverage and that his receivers were winning reps against man coverage on Sunday. Which means Shanahan is blaming Brock Purdy. He's the one who threw two interceptions against man to man coverage while Aiyuk and Bell were open according to Shanahan.

So Shanahan is pointing the finger at his quarterback while he should be pointing it at himself.

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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.

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