Kyle Shanahan finally has his 49ers offense cooking

It took until his third year as head coach, but we’re finally seeing Kyle Shanahan’s offense as it was meant to be. The 49ers are off to a strong start to their 2019 campaign, even if the two teams they’ve beaten — the Bengals and Buccaneers — are of questionable quality. The offense is clicking with a healthy Jimmy Garoppolo at quarterback, and the rest of the league should be on notice.

Good teams win in different ways. In Week 1, there were flashes of brilliance on offense, but a strong defense ultimately led the 49ers to a 31-17 victory over the Buccaneers. In Week 2, it was all about the offense, set up by Shanahan’s playcalling, in a 41-17 rout of the Bengals.

Expectations were high when Shanahan was hired away from the Falcons, where he was a well-regarded offensive coordinator. However, a long list of injuries — including losing Garoppolo for the bulk of the 2018 season — has impacted our ability to see what Shanahan can really do as a head coach.

That’s changing this season. Following their game, both 49ers and Bengals players had praise for Shanahan and his ability to script entire drives several plays in advance.

“It makes my job very easy,” Garoppolo said after the game. “His mind is incredible, just how he thinks. He’s two plays ahead while we’re running the current play and it makes everything so easy. And when he gets in a rhythm like that, it just puts everyone in a good position.”

That’s exactly how it looked on Sunday: everybody on offense in such a rhythm that the Bengals were always on their back feet. Misdirection, play-action, and trick plays led the 49ers to an average of 8.41 yards per play and 572 offensive yards total. The 49ers had six pass plays of 20-plus yards, nine runs of 10-plus yards, and went 5-for-9 on third down.

But more important than converting third downs is getting the job done on the earlier downs, and that’s where the 49ers had their biggest plays. And those were successful because Shanahan kept the Bengals guessing from the start.

On Sunday, the 49ers got out to an early lead and Shanahan never let up.

“When he gets in a rhythm, whatever personnel is out there — even if we haven’t gameplanned to go that many plays in a row — he just keeps it out there and he keeps it going,” fullback Kyle Juszczyk said after the game. “He likes to keep his foot on their throat.”

That sentiment bore out on the 49ers’ very first possession of the game. The team came out and ran three short plays in succession for a first down, then immediately went deep.

The play was also the first dose of play-action, a staple of Shanahan’s offense, which the 49ers used often and to great effect. The Bengals didn’t necessarily bite on the play-action, but it caused enough movement by the linebackers that Marquise Goodwin slipped right past them for a huge 13.2 yards of separation from the closest defender, per NFL Next Gen Stats.

Here’s some more play-action, and a great throw into coverage from Garoppolo:

This time, it’s second-and-10 and not long after the Bengals marched down the field to tie the game. Shanahan wanted to limit third-and-long situations, so the Niners ran a fake draw. Goodwin managed to find a soft spot in the zone, which Garoppolo hit with ease.

But play-action alone isn’t going to be enough — you have to do other things to set up the play-action, including getting the running backs involved in as many different types of plays you can. Before this next play, Garoppolo made some calls at the line, and ended up going with what looks like a screen option, with actual targets to his right and the screen set up to his left.

The Bengals sold out on the screen, but Garoppolo got it to running back Raheem Mostert. Mostert is a relative unknown the 49ers primarily use on special teams, but he’s the No. 2 back right now due to injuries. After he racked up 151 total yards Sunday, he showed he can be a playmaking threat.

That’s another takeaway from this season so far: the 49ers have a lot of young, quick, and versatile players who can turn short plays into large gains.

Most of the runs the 49ers had against the Bengals were tough rushes designed to move the chains. They did get some big plays in the running game though, like this bruising piece of art by Matt Breida:

That’s a third-and-1, and Shanahan knows as well as any coach that if you get too cute on third down, bad things can happen. So he put it in Breida’s hands, and the running back — starting after both Jerick McKinnon and Tevin Coleman were lost to injury — wound up making something out of nothing.

The 49ers were constantly moving the pocket and using misdirection, something several Bengals players noted postgame.

“They came out with a lot of gadget plays,” Bengals cornerback William Jackson said. “They used every trick in the book. It’s about having the right eyes and being in the right spot. They clearly play some Madden.”

Take this play, late in the second quarter:

That’s a fake handoff to rookie receiver Deebo Samuel, which made the Bengals initially lock in on him. Once they realized it wasn’t a handoff, they started to scramble. They didn’t expect Garoppolo to go right back to Samuel, but he did and it resulted in another massive gain on first down.

Near the end of the half, the 49ers had already done multiple fake sweeps, fake screens, and actual screens. The time was ripe for a bigger trick play.

On this second down play, Garoppolo never looked to his left, completely selling the idea that Dante Pettis was getting a screen. The Bengals had six guys looking at or coming in on Pettis, who then tossed it to Mostert for 16 yards.

Sometimes, after a little trickeration, a simple play-action can absolutely ruin a defense. Like here:

Check out how many Bengals players were looking the wrong way. Specifically, watch No. 36, safety Shawn Williams. He was faced the opposite direction until tight end George Kittle had caught the pass. Nobody was looking at Garoppolo rolling out, and it was an easy gain for Kittle.

The Bengals are capable of making stops on defense. They held Russell Wilson to under 200 passing yards and Chris Carson to just 46 yards rushing in their narrow Week 1 loss to the Seahawks. But the 49ers did everything to keep the Bengals on their toes. They avoided third down, they went for the big plays, and they ran when it was smart. By all accounts, this can be attributed to Shanahan’s ability to take control of a game with his playcalling.

It’s too soon to say if the 49ers are a playoff team this season, but at 2-0, they are trending upward. While they still have to show up against better teams than the Bengals or Buccaneers, the Niners will get that chance when they face opponents like the Packers, Ravens, and Rams later this season.

As long as Shanahan’s offense keeps playing to its potential, all of those teams would do well not to overlook San Francisco.