The San Francisco 49ers offense has been an inconsistent mess much of the season, and it has resulted in some rather ugly disparities in play-calling. The run/pass differential shown above was amplified in Week 9, with C.J. Beathard throwing 51 times, and the running backs getting 17 carries. That is ... that is not ideal.
Head coach Kyle Shanahan also serves as the offensive coordinator, so naturally he got some questions about the disparity in the run/pass ratio.
“Yeah, if you would have told me after the game that we were in the 50s compared to 17s, I would say how much did we get killed by? That's definitely not the goal going in. We want to be balanced always is our goal, especially in a situation that we were in. I would even want to do more. I don't just look at the number in the end and decide off that. I go watch how it all happens, how a game plays out. I know it was extremely unusual that we had 28 passes called and four two-minute drives. Never been a part of that before. I know we threw every single time in the fourth quarter. We went three-and-out on our first series which was in the first, I think it was in the 14-minute mark of the fourth quarter. We had a pass to [WR] Marquise [Goodwin] over the middle on first down. We had a drop, we had a check down to Kittle on second-and-10 that we dropped. Then we missed the third down. We got it back after that. That was five and a half minutes. We had three more possessions after that, and we were in two-minute all three of them. So you can add 28 passes there to two-minute situations, which I didn't believe it when I saw that, because that's a lot. But, those were some of our longer drives and we haven't been throwing every time. So I think that gets very skewed.”
Later he mentioned that someone told him the 49ers had run six plays this season while holding a lead. The only game in which they managed any sort of regular lead was their Week 4 overtime loss to the Arizona Cardinals. They took five leads in that game, and actually did not trail the game until they lost in overtime. But, every time they took a field goal lead, they gave it back with a field goal.
The 49ers are trying to compete and win football games, but their quarterback is also getting beaten to a pulp. Part of that is on the struggles of the interior offensive line, and part of that is on C.J. Beathard holding onto the ball too long. The drops are not helping matters, and we are seeing that impact the play-calling to some extent. How much do you see this falling on Shanahan’s play-calling vs. the drops vs. questionable offensive line play vs. Beathard’s internal play-clock creating issues??