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SANTA CLARA — En route to the 49ers’ seventh Super Bowl appearance in franchise history, head coach Kyle Shanahan showcased impressive leadership qualities, brilliant play-calling abilities and superior game-management skills.
But what makes the 49ers so dangerous against the Kansas City Chiefs isn’t what the offense and Shanahan have shown during the postseason. It’s what they haven’t put on tape.
In back-to-back 17-point playoff wins over the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers, Shanahan called a combined 89 run plays, but just 30 passes.
In the lead-up to the Super Bowl, the Chiefs will spend the next two weeks studying every 49ers game film and pouring through all of Shanahan’s tendencies as a play-caller, but thanks to San Francisco’s dominance on the ground, it’s anyone’s guess as to what’s still left in the playbook.
If the wide variety of creative, complex run plays are any indication of what the 49ers are capable of, the Chiefs could be in serious trouble. It’s possible, and entirely likely, the 49ers playbook is much deeper than the team has indicated this postseason, but thanks to the 49ers’ overwhelming advantages in the run game against the Vikings and Packers, Shanahan hasn’t had to reveal much.
“You never plan for it to be like that,” Shanahan said postgame. “But when you’re watching how our guys were running and how our defense was playing, it made it very easy to stick with it. Even on third downs.”
It’s difficult to call a run-heavy 49ers offense “conservative” because of all the different ways the team tries to gash opponents on the ground, but by limiting quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo to just eight passing attempts on Sunday, Shanahan made the Kansas City coaching staff’s job much harder over the next two weeks.
Prior to the fourth quarter on Sunday, the 49ers hadn’t targeted George Kittle once against a Green Bay defense that allowed Kittle to gain 129 yards on six receptions in the first blowout between these two teams. When the final horn sounded, midseason acquisition Emmanuel Sanders still didn’t have a reception.
“I think our mentality is, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,'” wide receiver Deebo Samuel said. “I ain’t got a problem going out there and being scrappy with the defense and blocking for the running back.”
Thanks to an offensive line (and several skill position players) that paved the way for 285 rushing yards, the 49ers rarely asked Garoppolo to test the Packers through the air.
“That’s what we do, we’re a run-first team,” wide receiver Kendrick Bourne said. “Once we get that going, there’s no need to put it in the air.”
The Packers never found an answer for 49ers running back Raheem Mostert, who rushed for 220 yards on Sunday, the second-highest total in NFL playoff history. Mostert and San Francisco’s offense was so dominant, so crisp and so efficient that at the end of Sunday’s game, Packers linebacker Blake Martinez admitted Green Bay didn’t have any idea how to stop a train now bound for Miami.
“We just never got a grasp on it,” Martinez said. “We never got a complete understanding on what they were trying to do throughout the game.”
The 49ers will now have two weeks to prepare for a Chiefs team that held the NFL’s leading rusher, Derrick Henry, to 69 yards on 19 carries in Sunday’s AFC Championship game. Kansas City clearly has the pieces to stop a strong rushing attack, but Shanahan now has the ability to let Garoppolo loose.
After completing 11-of-19 passes last week and six-of-eight attempts on Sunday, it’s fair to say the 49ers’ starting quarterback has yet to be tested in a significant way. There are legitimate questions Garoppolo will have to eventually answer about how he’ll perform in a postseason game when all the pressure rests on his shoulders, but to this point in the year, a balanced 49ers’ offense has taken the spotlight away from him.
Perhaps the Super Bowl will afford Garoppolo the chance to prove once and for all that he thrives under the pressure of a big game, but the Chiefs will have to take away the most dominant aspect of the 49ers’ offense to force him to prove it.
If Kansas City forces the 49ers to win through the air, the game might be a whole lot more compelling than the first two postseason blowouts Shanahan and San Francisco have breezed through.
